Sun Ok Hwang

Sun Ok Hwang was born in Shinchon, Hwanghae Province on February 13th, 1935, her earliest memories being of life under Japanese occupation. Her father, Jin Seop Hwang, joined their fire department’s night patrol to avoid being a target of the Japanese military’s arbitrary arrests while her mother, Young Sun Choi, would silently pick up rice from farmers whose harvest were to be taken by the Japanese.

Sun Ok tells us that her hometown was surrounded by fertile, arable land with productive rice fields that could only be enjoyed by the local Koreans illicitly; even then, as the Japanese had taken away their metallic dinnerware, many families had to eat with wooden, earthenware, or ceramic bowls. There was little time for celebration after liberation as her hometown was then partitioned as part of Communist Korea, whose ruling party imprisoned her father multiple times before he eventually passed from illness and repeated abuse.

In the midst of the Korean War, Sun Ok was taken to Ongjin, on the very edge of Hwanghae Province, by her grandfather, after which she crossed the 38th parallel to Baeknyun-do, an island off the coast of Incheon with a heavy American naval presence. From there she went to Busan, where she stayed for a year, before coming to Seoul, where a relative of her mother was stationed. She attended and graduated from college, after which she worked as a teacher’s assistant before meeting and marrying her husband In Whan Rheem, who had his own experiences of leaving his hometown in the North during the war.

She finds that being with someone with shared experienced allowed for the two to better understand and support one another as they navigated life both in South Korea, and then in the United States, as those who left their hometown and family in the North. Today, she’s grateful for her children, whose faith and lives she takes pride in, as well as her grandchildren.