The general secretary of the National Reconciliation Commission of the Korean Bishops gives the readers some understanding of separated families from Japan in the Unity and Reconciliation column of the Catholic Times.
Not long ago, the priest general secretary received a call from a Japanese priest he knows who was visiting Korea to help separated families. He ministers to immigrants in Shimonoseki and also works to help people with Korean roots among his compatriots in Japan. However, this time, it was concerned with an ethnic Korean family from China. These ethnic Koreans who were expelled by the Japanese government were currently residing in Korea and their young daughter remained in China.
Her parents, who were born and raised in a border town between North Korea and China, said they moved to Japan about 20 years ago to make money. The two worked hard and lived as a happy family until their daughter, born in Japan began attending middle school. However, their illegal residency status eventually brought misfortune. When they reported this to the government expecting leniency this became the source of trouble. They wanted to proudly settle down in Japanese society, but the result was forced eviction.
It was difficult to suddenly go to China, abandoning everything and the daughter who had grown up knowing only the Japanese culture. The father, who became a repatriation evader, had to spend four years in a concentration camp. His daughter, now a high school senior, is staying with her grandparents in China, but she cannot speak any Chinese and cannot attend school. Their dream is for their family of three to live together in Korea. However, unlike the ‘Chinese Korean’ parents who were able to obtain residency status, the issue of staying in Korea for their daughter born in Japan is the problem.
We met with the staff of the Tokyo Catholic Center, a Japanese priest, and the child's parents who had accompanied them for several years, as well as our diocese's immigrant pastor. Although we all knew that resolving visas would be difficult, Korean and Japanese priests and activists decided to continue their efforts to reunite separated families, feeling like they were grasping at straws. In the car on the way back, the columnist thought he should say something to thank the Japanese activist. ‘Thank you for helping our people" but the voice of the Korean-Chinese mother who was interpreting seemed to tremble a little. At her parting, she said in her hushed voice, ‘Thank you for calling us the same people.’
Although the term 'nation' seems to have gone out of fashion, not least because of the frozen inter-Korean relations, there are still people who feel warmth in the word 'nation'. This Chuseok, let us pray more earnestly for the comfort of the Virgin Mary to be conveyed to our scattered people.
