Media: Society: News: Hankyoreh

My father Park Seong-cheol (left) and mother Lee Nam-soon (front line, right) were an elite who studied abroad in Japan and married in 1944 and have two boys and two girls. The photo was taken in Japan in 1954. It was a commemoration of the reunion of his mother after the ceasefire, as his father, who was a hydro-machinery expert, worked at MacArthur headquarters in Tokyo after the Korean War broke out during a business trip to the United States. Provided by Banah Kim

In 1964, when my mother Il-seon (Lee Nam-soon, 1922-2013) left Busan Port with our four siblings and boarded an immigration ship for Brazil, all of them were USD 400. After the decision to immigrate to Brazil, my father (Park Seong-cheol, 1926-84) was in charge of the technology and tried to raise money for immigration by selling the Daedong Pump Company, which my mother ran, because the collection staff ran away with all the money. Inevitably, his father was behind, and only his mother and four siblings left for a reckless immigration route on the side of a Dutch freighter in October of that year. Every time we stopped at 10 ports until the ship arrived at the port of Santos, Brazil, our mother took us on a tour of the port city, saying that she must see the wide world. The most memorable place was Cape Town, the capital of South Africa, which was highly racist at the time. Later, when I read my mother’s 40-year diary while helping her mother organize her autobiography, Nelson Mandela, who became President of South Africa, was sentenced to life in prison that year at the very place we left and looked around. My mother admired Mandela, who declared in court that “(for the sake of democracy) I am ready for death.” I now have the biography of Nelson Mandela that my mother was reading.

When I lived in Seoul in 1949. From left, second daughter Park Eun-myeong (ban-a), mother Lee Nam-soon and eldest son Se-jin, and eldest daughter Ok-gyeong. Provided by Banah Kim

When I look back on my life with my mother, I think of Gary Chapman’s. One word of praise and encouragement, both definite time, three gifts, four service, five touches. When we were growing up, my mother was an office worker in charge of managing the company, so she went out every day, and she didn’t have a caring style like’my daughter~, my son~’. Since her mother completed her first business management course in Korea at Hongil Branch in 1958 at the Seoul Productivity Center in 1958, she has been running the most efficient way of living in the family and raising children in accordance with the principles of corporate management. When my family immigrated from Brazil to Canada for the second time in 1968, my parents made a five-year plan, set the goal of sending their four children to the University of Toronto with the money saved by working hard, and finding a house within a 30-minute walk of a trolley. I rode around and watched a chapter for six families, and thanks to that, in my fourth year, I was able to enter the University of Toronto for three, and Megil University for my sister. From an early age, my mother received training for her maternal grandfather (Lee Jong-man). The maternal grandfather tried to pass on all of himself, as if he had identified his youngest daughter as the successor to the’Daedong Konzern’ published in 1937, and his mother absorbed the teachings of his maternal grandfather, who was an entrepreneur with the Daedong idea, like a sponge.

When her mother, who had settled in Jeju after returning to Korea in 2006, received brain surgery in 2011, four siblings scattered around the country gathered. From left: Dr. Park Se-jin, Ph.D. in Sociology, Ok-Kyung Ok, Ph.D. in Anthropology, Eun-Myung Eun (Ban-ah), Ph. Provided by Banah Kim

As for the mother’s unique’Language of Love’, our four siblings each wrote one article in an autobiography published in the year of 88 years old (2010, mental world history) and came to a common conclusion. It was an indomitable courage to go through life’s ruinous events and a spiritual antenna that touched the sky. A guardian angel would appear in any difficult situation in front of his mother, who had amazing faith in God the guardian. When the Korean War broke out and evacuated from Seoul, a soldier guarding a train carrying military supplies taught his mother how to get on. Rao, a Chinese sailor who met on an immigration ship to Brazil, lent money to her mother to settle well in Sao Paulo. Three years later, Eugene was greeted with the scholar of graduating as first in the whole school. When I was looking for a job as a seamstress in Sao Paulo and when my sister and I were looking for a job at the KOTIA Japanese Labor Union, it was possible thanks to my mother’s fluent Japanese. In 1975, her mother was Canadian, so she was able to go to Pyongyang to meet her maternal grandfather, who had been separated for 28 years. At that time, I also became a neutralization activist under the influence of my mother who prayed day and night for the’small and neutral peace and unification of the South and North Korea’ after returning from Pyongyang for 3 nights and 4 days. I think it is thanks to my mother’s prayer that I learned that North Korea has been pursuing a’non-alignment neutral’ foreign policy from an early age. Second daughter/Ban-ah Kim spirituality activist