Emotional Obstacles to Reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula

To say that my husband and my perspectives have changed since working in the DPRK is an understatement. We have lived and worked in North Korea as humanitarian workers for over twelve years now. And as a result, we have forever been changed.

Seeing how local people live in the DPRK has revolutionized our thinking in many ways, but what has really been life-transforming are the relationships that we have built amongst our co-workers, our employees, and our colleagues throughout the country.

As humanitarian workers, our focus is on serving the least of the least. Our non-profit organization, Ignis Community, aims to ignite hope and transform communities by building relationships and long-term, sustainable solutions. Although part of what we do includes distributing humanitarian donations of food and clothing, with the exception of disaster-relief projects, we always contribute to the same institutions month after month. In this way, we are not just delivering goods but building relationships with the directors, staff members, and even the children at daycare centers, preschools, and rural-side clinics. We believe that it is through these relationships that walls break down and real sustainable change emerges.

In 2012, our family was invited to move from the northeast region of North Korea to the capital city of Pyongyang. Our task was to create cutting-edge medical treatment for spine conditions and children with developmental disabilities. These specialties were brand-new in the DPRK, and Ignis Community was asked to provide the expertise, resources, and training to develop medical treatment methodologies in the nation.

View of Pyongyang, DPRK

Thus, as our family moved to Pyongyang, we began providing hope to children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities that had never before received any form of medical care or treatment. Mothers with their children started to line up outside our hospital doors begging for the foreign doctor to take a look at their child. Eventually, the birth of this new specialty in the capital city began to expand to other surrounding Provincial Children Hospitals.

Occupational Therapy in the Pyongyang Medical School Hospital

On one occasion during one of our short breaks away from Pyongyang, we received a group of visitors. To our surprise after sharing what we do in the DPRK over dinner, one of the visitors accused us of supporting the DPRK Communist government. “You are supporting an evil regime! And we cannot condone the humanitarian work you are doing in North Korea!” they declared. They insisted that we leave Pyongyang immediately.

It is true that because of DPRK’s socialist and communist government almost all business and all land in North Korea are owned by the government. If we go out to eat, stay at a hotel, or even obtain taxi services, a portion of the funds we pay goes to the government. Personal taxes are relatively high, approximately up to 40-60% of an individual’s income.

However, as our humanitarian work exists to serve children, families, and local communities in North Korea, we never considered that our living in the DPRK was promoting any political regime. We were there to build deeper relationships with the people and consequently ensure long-term, viably sustainable medical treatment and care for patients with spinal conditions and developmental disabilities.

Our discussion with these visitors went on throughout the night. They would not let us go, even accusing us of promoting the “anti-Christ”! But as the darkness of night broke into the dawn of a new day, the root of their hatred and anger was exposed. “How can you help North Koreans! They murdered my uncle in front of my own eyes,” they confessed.

We began to understand. For this elderly couple from South Korea, they had personally experienced the trauma of war. They witnessed with their own eyes North and South Koreans killing each other. Not just anyone was killed. Their own family members died right in front of them. This was personal. Their past was still very real and alive in their minds.

Many political scholars compare Germany to Korea. Both Germany and Korea were split between two regimes by Russia and the United States at the end of World War II. And since Germany was able to successfully reunite, we often think that Korea can easily follow Germany’s example.

But East and West Germany did not fight against each other. There was no bloody conflict that continues to burn strong in the hearts and minds of the people.

For North and South Korea, the war is still very real to the old generation. These memories have also been passed down to each subsequent generation, and for very good reason. More than a million innocent civilians died on both sides of the border during the Korean War. Mass casualties of women and children, grandmothers and grandfathers even out-numbered the military casualties! It is estimated that over 5 million people died on the Korean Peninsula over just a short span of three years.

Therefore, reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula will take time. It will require healing and  miracles in the hearts of millions of people, in both the North and the South.

The critical factor is that this process of healing and reconciliation begins. But, it cannot begin when we are still at war, still fighting each other, still stuck in conflict. This is why ending the Korean War is so vital. It is the first step not only towards peace but also towards opening up the pathway to people’s hearts. Ending the Korean conflict is about learning to heal, to forgive, and to hope for a new chapter in Korean history.