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Chahee Lee Stanfield
Address at the Dirksen Senate Building
Address at Harvard University
Kennedy School
I am a retired librarian. When librarians tell stories, they often begin with the phrase,
“once upon a time,” and end with the phrase, “they all lived together happily ever after.” But this evening, I am going to
tell you a real story, a story about my family which is one of a million
divided family stories. In the end we
didn’t live together happily ever
after.
It all started more than 55
years ago. I was born in a mountain
village called Daputaher in Manchuria, which was a Korean guerilla hideout when
Korea was under Japanese rule. My father
(See his picture in the family album on the Home Page) had 120 to 150 men
cultivating agricultural land in Dapuchaher, and during the day they worked in
the fields, but at night they were armed to protect the village from bandits,
which were common in those days. According
to the area history, my father provided food and weapons to the Korean
guerillas, and one of the leaders was the future Prime Minister Kim Il Sung,
and one of the guerillas was my father’s brother. My father also built
the road between Doonhwa and Dapuchaher, which was about a four hour drive, and
that road was built ideal for the Koreans to ambush the Japanese soldiers. In summer of 1988, I went to China to find
out what happened to my father and took the road to Dapuchaher which had been a
legendary road in my childhood dreams in the land of the old Korea Dynasty.
When World War II was over,
my family decided to return home, to Taegu Korea. My mother, my brothers and sisters, and I
left for South Korea, but my father and one of my brothers, Oong Hee stayed
behind to wrap up the business. They
were to join us in Taegu in a week or so.
That was it! That was the last
time we saw my father and my brother.
That was how my family was split forever. But right after we left, the border between
China and North Korea was closed, and my father and brother became trapped in
Manchuria. In the late 1940’s, there were riots in Manchuria, and the Chinese government gave my
father troops and asked him to put down the riots, and my father did. As a reward, the Chinese government granted
my father’s wish to move to move to
North Korea, and they moved.
In
1992, my nephew, who was a Methodist church minister in Chicago, visited North
Korea with a group of ministers. When he
arrived in North Korea, he mentioned my father’s name to the guide.
The next day when he came back to the hotel from his meeting, surprisingly, Oong Hee was waiting for
him. After that, Oonghee had written to
me three times, but at the end of the 1990’s, his letters abruptly stopped.
I don’t know whether he is still alive or not, but I know at least what
happened to my father.
Shortly after my father and
Oong Hee arrived in North Korea in 1950, the Korean War broke out, and Oonghee
was conscripted into the North Korean army and fought for North Korea while my
three other brothers fought for South Korea, and one of them was killed. When the Korean War was over and Oonghee
returned home, the 38th parallel was drawn between South Korea and
North Korea. This time my father and
brother became trapped in North Korea. My father realized that he
had a long and difficult road ahead of him to reunite with his family. At the age of 54 in North Korea, he started
running marathons, and later he became well-known as an educator, inspirational
speaker, and athlete. They called him “Chullima Halabuz.” Chullima is a legendary horse which runs long
distances, and Halbuzi means grandpa. At
prime minister Kim Il Sung’s request, they made a movie
about my father’s life, and it was entitled
Lee Sang Moon, the 60 year-old youth. In
March or April 1994, a group of North Koreans visited Chicago, and the leader,
Chairman Lee Jong Hyuck, told me that my father had passed away, and his movie
had been shown again on TV in December of the previous year.
I have a picture from a
North Korean magazine article showing my father crossing a marathon goal line
at the age of 73. It says, Lee Sang Moon
is 73 years old now. But he still competes
with the young people in marathons covering the regular distance with good
results. My father thought he could
beat time as long as he could run, but it wasn’t so. He died
from food poisoning the next
year. He was a worrier and a hero for
his ill fated country, but wild poisonous greens, which someone had cooked,
ended his life with his dream of reuniting his family. On his death bed, he put up a fight. He wanted to beat death as he had done so
many obstacles in his life, but in the end like millions of other divided
family members, he yielded to death. When all the strength went out of his
body, he asked his son to bury him on the hill facing the south which he had
visited whenever he had time. On September 22, 2001, Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk
took us to meet Secretary of State Colin Powell and at the meeting, the US
policy on the divided families was adopted. The policy
was that when the United States had a normal relationship with North Korea, the
divided family issue would be dealt with as a top priority. A resolution supporting the policy was
adopted in the Congress and in the Senate a few months later. And it brought hope to the Korean American
community. One day five gentlemen visited me in the library. They told me about their families in North
Korea in tears. They knew their worst
enemy was time, and they knew they had only a few years left at most. But they believed in our government, and they
renewed their hope to see their family members again.
In April, 2006, a reporter
from USA Today called me and said that she wanted to interview some divided family
members. I tried to contact the five old
men and found out that they were all gone.
Three of them had passed away, one was in a nursing home, and one had
become sick and moved to his daughter’s in North Carolina.
I remember those five men so
vividly just like it was yesterday. I
saw my father’s tears, fears,
and hopes in them. The last 10 years
have been the most brutal years to us, and most divided family members I knew
have passed away one by one. Unlike the
South Korean divided family members, who can take a few hours trip in their
wheel chairs to North Korea, most Korean-American divided family members are no
longer able to handle the process physically, mentally, and economically. Most of us are at the very end of our
lives.
Things don’t look
good. Now it’s up to
the North Koreans. They have to open
their hearts. They have to show the
world that they have hearts. We are a
good humanitarian card, which can be a good cause to bring good things to
them. If they choose not to use it, it
will be useless. But if they want to use
it, they have to do it now because it is going to expire very soon.
We have had Congressman Kirk
working hard for us for the last 10 years.
He has been fighting against time with us. But time has never stopped zeroing in on us,
and it is choking us now while the Six-Party-Talks situation has given a green
light all along to time.
There are no fairy tale
stories of living together happily ever after in the divided family
stories. But something good and
unexpected came out of this. The
children of our children who were born and raised in this country have come
back to their old