The National Unification Advisory Council presented awards to 63 students for
their submissions to the “Letters to our North Korean Friends Contest” on
August 19th. 9350 elementary school
students from 700 elementary schools throughout South Korea participated in the
contest, which opened in June and received over 10,000 entries.
Grand prize winner, Jo Si Eun, a 6th
grade student at Boksu Elementary School in Daejeon, lost her father in the Second Battle of
Yeonpyeong battle in 2002. When she started writing the letter, she said she
had “planned to excoriate the North for taking my father away from me.” She
said once she started though, she had a change of heart, “I remembered all
those who die from starvation and realized that they are our family.”
She went on to say, “My teacher taught us
that the North and South are same group of people with the same origins, but I
could only think of them as the country that stole my father from me. However, I eventually recognized that many
of them may have also lost a parent and set out to write a letter to them, for
us to commiserate and share our sorrow together. Additionally, I would like for
us to discuss ways to prevent this from ever happening again.” Jo explained
that in the future, after unification, she would like to travel on the
Trans-Siberian Railway to Europe with
North Koreans who also lost parents in the Yeonpyeong Island shelling.
The Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, which
broke out at the height of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, saw the death of six South Korean naval
officers and 19 others injured. Jo’s father, a sergeant and marksman on the
Chamsuri 357, was said to have fought bravely until the end of the battle. His
daughter was just shy of three months old at the time.
National Unification Advisory Council
Executive Vice-Chairperson, Hyun Kyung Dae stated at the event, “I hope that
the honest and sincere words of our children reach their North Korean
friends. Their letters show solidarity and compassion for the starving
people in North Korea and wish for unification to overcome those problems
together in the future.”
