Every year, Brian Park attends the Remembrance Day ceremony with his family. As he observes the proceedings, his thoughts go to the Canadians who have fought in the Korean War. "I want to express my appreciation for what they have done," Park says. "Because of them, I am here with my family in the most livable country in the world and I am thankful to be given that freedom."
Park has been living in Canada for 15 years: six of those he has spent on Bowen Island where he is well-known as the owner of the Snug Cove General Store. Yet he hasn't forgotten the story of his family in Korea that has been shaped by the separation of North and South Korea. "My parents lived through the war," he said. "They are from Seoul and, as is quite common for their generation, they had the desire for a unified Korea."
Park explains that Korea used to be a Japanese colony for 40 years from the beginning of the 1900s. "The Japanese used Korea for natural and human resources," he said. "When Japan surrendered at the end of the Second World War, Korea was finally independent but it was divided: the Soviet Union controlled the northern part and the United States controlled the southern part. After four years, they both left. The northern part had been influenced by communism and the southern part by capitalism." Park said that many Koreans wanted a unified Korea but the two ideologies did not mix. "A lot of tension arose and that's how the Korean War broke out," he said.
It started in1950 and, after the United Nations passed a resolution to send troupes, Canadian soldiers were deployed in Korea. "About 26,000 Canadian soldiers came, 566 got killed and 1,500 were wounded," Park said, referring to printed sources he has brought along to the interview. "In 1953, the war ended. About 10 million people had been killed yet the country is still divided and we still have two different ideologies there," Park said. "People often call the Korean War the forgotten war."
Park's family has personally felt the effects of living in a divided country. "My father-in-law was born in North Korea. He came to the south when he was 17 years old," Park says. His father-in-law's family had been well off and educated, the kind of people who were often targeted by the Communist government, and that was the reason he and his brothers were sent to live in the south. "After that, my father-in-law could never go home. He never saw his family again," Park says. "There was no contact, no letters, no phone calls and he didn't know whether his family was still alive."
Park felt the full impact of the situation when he, shortly after getting married, attended one of the family gatherings that are traditional for Thanksgiving and New Year's. "That's when families usually get together but when I went to my wife's house, there were no family members left," he said, adding that his wife's mother's family also originated in the north.
Park noticed that his father-in-law was deeply affected by the circumstances and reached out to help. "I felt that I needed to do something and contacted a missionary based in China who was going to North Korea," he said, explaining that foreigners had more freedom than Korean citizens when it came to finding information. Park paid a sum of money and passed on the names, birth dates and last known addresses of his wife's relatives. "But we couldn't find them," he said.
All this has contributed to Park's appreciation for the Canadian soldiers who fought in Korea. "They came to fight for the freedom of people they had never met. And those influences are passed on from generation to generation," he said. He has also come across an inspiring story about two Canadian brothers, Joseph and Archibald Hearsey, he wanted to share. Joseph, the older brother, went to fight in Korea and Archibald enlisted shortly after. Archibald asked to be assigned to the same battalion but never saw his brother in Korea because Joseph was killed there and buried at the United Nation's graveyard. Archibald returned to Canada but informed his family that he wanted his final resting place to be near his brother. Last year, Archibald Hearsey's ashes were shipped to Korea to be close to Joseph's remains.
Another place that holds special meaning for Park is the Korean War memorial in Burnaby. "It's in a beautiful park and commemorates soldiers from B.C. who fought in Korea," he says, adding that it was erected with donations from the Lower Mainland's Korean community and he has visited it twice with his children.
As for North and South Korea, Park said that the younger generation has a different view on a potential unification. "We realize that North Korean has been very isolated and many people don't know what is going on in the world outside," he says. "We are not in a hurry."
