LOS ANGELES: International Women of Courage honoree visits diocesan refugee resettlement ministry
Episcopal News Service. March 17, 2010 [031710-05]
Pat McCaughan
Dr. Lee Ae-ran of the Republic of Korea had received an international award for courage from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but on March 15 her congratulations were all for a group of newly arrived Iranians at the Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Service, an institution of the Diocese of Los Angeles.
"I congratulate you now for coming to your new country and I hope no matter where we are, whether in this country or in Korea, that we all find happy life," she said through an interpreter.
"My relatives emigrated here a long time ago and they have succeeded," she told the group, who had been attending an orientation session at the Los Angeles center. "I have come to realize what's really important is not just money or financial accomplishment but to believe in freedom and a democratic society and to pursue my dream."
She visited Los Angeles after receiving the 2010 International Women of Courage Award along with nine others March 10 in Washington, D.C. Clinton and First Lady Michele Obama and actress Reese Witherspoon were on hand for the awards.
Lee said she empathizes with refugees, having been one.
"Thirteen years ago I defected from North Korea and came to South Korea," she said through the interpreter. "What I faced there was loneliness and despair. My child at the time was just four months old and as a woman it was very difficult to find a job."
Now, 13 years later, she has "come to learn that freedom and democracy and human rights are inherent, God-given gifts and that these are such important gifts that I have received."
Bishop Jon Bruno of Los Angeles and IRIS director Meghan Tumilty welcomed Lee to the center, which expects to resettle about 1,400 refugees in 2010.
Bruno echoed Lee's remarks about the importance "that we all work hard and celebrate our freedom. All too often we take it for granted that we have freedom, that we have justice today. I give thanks for the fact that my parents emigrated here."
Jenik Arik, who attended the orientation session along with her niece, who just emigrated from Iran, said Lee's story of helping others after escaping North Korea "is very amazing. Her courage is really unbelievable. It's just like the films you see, but now we see the truth in front of us."
After her grandparents fled the country during the Korean War, Lee and her parents "were branded as a bad element by the North Korean government," Lee said. They spent eight years in a labor camp, enduring abuse, starvation and punishment for what was considered to be her grandparents' crimes.
After her release, she graduated from college and worked at a government science and technology committee. In 1997, after a family relative in the United States published a memoir implicating her father in anti-regime activities, she fled to South Korea rather than face imprisonment again. She was able to take her infant son with her, but was forced to leave behind her husband and other family members.
Lee, a professor in the Department of Food and Nutrition at Kyungin Women's College, is the first North Korean defector to earn a doctoral degree. In 2005, she founded the Global Leadership Scholarship Program, which has provided more than a thousand North Korean students with scholarships to learn English.
Four years later, she founded the Hana Defector Women's Organization, an NGO with more than 200 members that provides North Korean women in the Republic of Korea with job training, childcare, educational support, and human rights training. This year, Lee also opened the first North Korea Traditional Culinary and Culture Institute to provide North Korean women with practical entrepreneurial and culinary arts skills.
On March 15, Juliet, an IRIS caseworker, told Lee about her experience of emigrating from Iran in 2008 and receiving new opportunities through IRIS. An emotional Juliet described her fear that she would be forced to leave her son behind, after her husband refused to emigrate. Eventually, they divorced and she was able to bring her son with her.
"I really cannot live without my son," she said. "He is 17 years old and in high school and he has a really different life in the U.S."
Lee shared stories of women who, while attempting to earn money to pay brokers to help their children defect, "end up as sex slaves" or of children who die during the journey, through Vietnam, China or Mongolia, to get to South Korea.
In another situation a woman defector asked for Lee's help to obtain the release of her nine-year-old son, who was caught in Laos while being brought to South Korea by a broker. "I was able to scrape up like $500 to give her," and she was able to bribe an official to win her son's release, Lee said.
Tearing up, she also described seeing abandoned children, and a young boy who starved to death on the streets. Another one, who was separated from his mother in the dark was screaming: "Mom, I won't say anymore that I'm hungry," she recalled. "It was getting dark and he couldn't find her and I heard him cry."
Since 2007, U.S. Embassies in each country nominate a woman considered to have contributed the most to improving women's rights around the world in commemoration of International Women's Day, which falls on March 8. The Department of State chooses the winners. Finally, the Secretary of State hosts an awards ceremony for the recipients in Washington D.C.
U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens said Lee "has done so much … to empower North Korean women refugees and to advance women's' issues in South Korea."
Lee also works with "North Korean Youth Christian Meeting," a group established in 2007 to aid North Korean refugees in difficult situations and encourage Christian fellowship, where Dr. Lee teaches bible classes.
She is also involved with efforts to connect refugees with people who can offer them financial stability by acting as guarantors on bank loans.
Other 2010 awardees are: Shukria Asil (Afghanistan), Col. Shafiqa Quraishi (Afghanistan), Androula Henriques (Cyprus), Sonia Pierre (Dominican Republic), Shadi Sadr (Iran), Ann Njogu (Kenya), Jansila Majeed (Sri Lanka), Sister Marie Claude Naddaf (Syria), and Jestina Mukoko, a Zimbabwe Anglican and human rights activist. [A story about Mukoko is available here.
While honored, Lee said: "I haven't really done that much, just what I had to do along the way. I just feel God has given me so many opportunities. So much good has happened that I have to help more and share more."
She added that: "I really believe this award is a message given to the people left behind in North Korea, a message of hope. If somehow this news reaches North Korea, it might make them think about what a free and democratic society is all about. Maybe it will encourage them to be braver and to join us."