Koreans in Hawai'i not fixed on North

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

The bad news out of North Korea, with its reported threats of war and efforts to expand its nuclear program, does not appear to have caused great concern among Hawai'i's Korean community.

Whether Korean Americans are distracted by other concerns or think its just too soon to know if the nuclear threat posed by North Korea is genuine — is uncertain.

Applications for travel visas are about where they usually are, in the monthly range of 50 to 70, said Myung Hee Lee, who handles visa applications at the South Korean Consulate.

There have been scattered cancellations from travel agencies but no great changes in travel bookings, said Jeanette Yoo, assistant sales manager at Korean Air.

Mark Shim, who is close to the pulse of the community as morning disc jockey on KREA-AM, said he has had relatively little feedback about the situation from his listeners.

"If you ask Koreans, they're more interested in what America is going to do in Iraq than in North Korea," Shim said.

Responses to North Korean political posturing have been confused by a number of factors, he said. Last year's World Cup games caused a surge in general Korean pride, Shim said, and the recent South Korean elections have buoyed enthusiasm for the new political leadership in the republic.

There also have been more tours from the republic to the north in recent years, said Choong Nam Kim, project coordinator for the POSCO Fellowships at the East-West Center who is writing a book on Korean presidential leadership. Paired with the push for reunification by the republic's past administration, a measure of good will toward the north has built up in recent years among Koreans, he said.

They also are used to an ongoing background of enmity, he added.

"The North Korean nuclear crisis is a decade old," said Kim. "And South Korean people have lived under continuous confrontation with North Korea for a half-century."

In America, however, there may be more concern because people have a greater opportunity to hear how North Korea is portrayed in Western news media, said Kim. "I think the Korean Americans, they are more concerned than the Koreans at home," he said. "Their news coming from Korea is more left-oriented, more criticizing the United States. They are facing a confused, contradictory information coming from American and Korean media."

Ed Shultz, director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Hawai'i, said he has heard little from Korean students suggesting an excess of concern about North Korea's threats, partly because of a credibility gap.

"I have a sense that South Korean students don't really care about North Korea," he said. "They don't like the North Korea government and they don't give it much credence, but they do have aloha for the people."

One with such aloha is Ilman Chung, a restaurant owner whose father, aunt and cousin are in the North; Chung's father, a South Korean police official during the Korean War, was arrested just after the war. He has tried repeatedly to locate his family in the North, without success.

"They don't want me to meet my family," he said. "They don't care, alive or not, hungry or not."

Chung has had to turn his attention to his life in America, as had so many other Korean Americans. Many are worried about the world situation but more because of the Iraq conflict than what they hear from their homeland, Shim said.

"Koreans are working hard to be American, to be Hawaiian," he said.

Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.