|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Walter: North Korean Expatriate
| Article
# : |
11028 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1986 |
3,336 Words |
| Author
: |
Barry Farber
Barry Farber is the host of a radio talk show for WMCA in New
York and has done extensive writing for national magazines and
newspapers. |
He is Asian features didn't strike me as anything immediately sensational.
Sure, he was obviously out of place, but he could easily have been a Filipino Red Cross worker or a Japanese newsman.
The rest of them were all Hungarian refugees, some no more than six or eight hours into the sub-zero warmth of freedom in Austria. It was Christmas Eve, 1956, in a student hostel in downtown Vienna, hastily converted into a refugee dormitory for Hungarian students fleeing westward after their country's bid for freedom had been brutally flattened under the treads of Soviet tanks.
I was in Vienna en route from America to the Austro-Hungarian border to cover the refugee outpouring for my hometown newspaper, the Greensboro [N.C.] Daily News. I had had the good fortune to find my way into that room by following a group of young people who were speaking a language that was obviously not German. Enough of the Hungarian students spoke English to convince us that the Hungarian Revolution, far from being the "terrorist assault by fascist revanchists" claimed by Moscow, was actually a massive, popular uprising of the Hungarian people against both Communist party rule and Soviet domination.
I kept looking at his face across the room. He somehow didn't look like a newsman or a Red Cross worker. Except for his Asian features, he looked exactly like the Hungarian students.
Soon the Hungarian students began singing one of those European student songs that calls for everybody to lock arms and sway back and fourth as they sing. I couldn't believe it. He was singing and swaying with them! Whoever he was, clearly he had just come out of Hungary with them!
I bounded across the room and grabbed him by the shoulders. I said "China?" He said, "Korea!"
"America!" I said, pointing to myself. We were both the right age to have been fighting each other in Korea three years before. That's what drove us into a spontaneous bear hug.
An attractive young Hungarian woman who spoke excellent English appeared. She told me his story.
His name was Zang Gi Hong and he was from North Korea. He
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
