[imText1]There is now a clearly perceptible public movement to finally obtain the return of Shin Suk Ja and her two daughters from North Korea after 25 years. The calls for their release have spread from Shin’s hometown in Tongyeong through the rest of South Gyeongsang Province, and are now becoming a nationwide issue. Last Friday, The Daily NK met with Shin’s husband, Professor Oh Gil Nam, to talk about the sudden developments. “I desperately want to see them, to tell them I’m sorry,” he says.
Those who have met Professor Oh are struck by how much harm the endless guilt has done to his health. He has very high blood pressure, and his mind and body are worn down by 20 years of drowning his sorrows in alcohol. He even has diabetes.
Despite his list of medical problems, Oh plans to visit Germany next month. His wife was a resident of West Germany when she left for North Korea, and possessed a German asylum passport. To all intents and purposes, she was a citizen. It’s a long shot, but Oh wonders if the German government might be able to help resolve the matter if it decided to intervene.
Oh says that he has spent the years saving as much money as he can in preparation for the day his wife and daughters come home. He has plans to use some of that money to provide his daughters, Hye Won and Gyu Won, with a modern education as quickly as possible so that they can make their way in society.
Oh has found some inspiration in Kang Cheol Hwan, a rare defector in that he managed to escape from a camp, the same one as Oh’s family are said to be interned in, and is now a journalist with the Chosun Ilbo in Seoul. “He said he came out of the prison camp and then ate well, arriving in South Korea tall and with a normal face. I wonder if my daughters could be like that. I believe they would turn into beautiful ladies,” he says wistfully.
“Of course it would be nice if all the people of South Korea adopted this cause to have my family set free, but it would be wrong of me to be the one lobbying for that,” he says. “I don’t want to burden the government, either.” That said, Oh agrees that to the extent that he is a Seoul citizen it would be nice if mayoral candidates Na Gyeong Won and Park Won Soon took an interest in the cause and signed the petition to have them released.
“When I first got back to South Korea I put all my effort into writing to try and get my family released, but the government blocked the publication of my book, and my attempt to have them included in the agreement that saw Lee In Mo repatriated to North Korea failed. That was the time of Han Wan Sang as unification minister, and the government seemed to be concerned about North-South relations.”
Oh says, “In the past I often dreamed about my wife and daughters. I used to have dreams where I would grasp their hands and hold them tight, but now I don’t even see them in my dreams so much.” He can’t help worrying that something might have happened to them.
According to people who claim to have seen Oh’s family in North Korea recently, Shin is not in good health at all. “If they don’t stabilize her condition she will get worse,” he says, adding, “The lack of nourishment is a worry.”
Shin got an infection handling blood during her time as a nurse in a German hospital. She also still suffers the long-lasting side effects of a car crash. Indeed, Oh has long said that the guarantees of well-known composer Yun I Sang that his wife’s health would be dealt with played a part in enticing him into the North.
“The issue of my family goes beyond ideology; it is about the dignity of humanity, it is about life and death. It would be nice if the North Korean government forgot about the politics of the left and right and treated this instead as a matter of life and death.”
About Oh Gil Nam:
Oh was a student living in political asylum in Germany when he defected to North Korea in December 1985, at the persuasion of Yun I Sang and North Korean spy Kim Jong Han. He succeeded in escaping while on an unescorted mission to Copenhagen, Denmark in November 1986. It is known that his wife and two daughters were then taken away and imprisoned in the notorious Yodok political prison camp. Their detainment at Yodok has been corroborated by well-known defectors with knowledge of the camp, including Kang Cheol Hwan (mentioned above) and Kim Tae Jin.
