hankyoreh

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“The German government stepped in and paid three months of the employees’ wages. The reason I came to South Korea was to help this organization get back on its feet. . .”

Kim In-seon, 65, president of a volunteer hospice organization in Berlin, Germany, called Mitgehen (meaning “going together”), came to South Korea on June 1, just when MERS was starting to spread.

In a recent interview with the Hankyoreh, Kim was asked how Mitgehen was doing. She said it had suspended operations. She filed for bankruptcy in Berlin at the end of February, and her four employees continued working until the end of last month, when they quit.

Kim, a South Korean nurse who worked in Germany, set up the organization with her own money 10 years ago in order to provide terminal care to other South Koreans who had gone to Germany as nurses and miners. During the 1960s and 1970s, around 7,900 miners and 11,000 nurses came to Germany from South Korea. Around 7,000 of them are still living in Germany today.

In addition to South Koreans, Mitgehen also provides care to other migrant workers from East Asia, including Filipinos and Vietnamese. Each year, the organization has helped between 60 and 70 people to meet a peaceful end.

“We need a new space with hospice beds where we can take care of people who are in poor health,” Kim said. She has to come up with 100,000 euros (US$113,500) for rent and operational costs before she boards her plane to Germany on July 5.

“If I can’t get the money, the charity will have to be shut down,” Kim said. Prior to this, Kim and her friends had pitched in to cover the operation costs, which ran to about 2,000 euros (US$2,270) a month. Now, Kim says she has reached her limit.

In South Korea, many have spoken highly of Kim’s activity, but few have been willing to support her.

Between 2010 and 2011, Kim received the Foreign Minister’s Prize, the Bichumi Woman’s Award from the Samsung Foundation, and the Overseas Korean Prize from KBS. She will also be appearing in a documentary marking the 70th anniversary of South Korea’s independence from Japanese colonial rule which will be broadcast at the end of this month on KBS.

But when her organization ran into financial difficulties, the South Korean government and corporations were reluctant to come to her aid, she said.

“They told us that we contributed to Korea’s economic development, but they aren’t actually interested. When President Park Geun-hye came to Germany last year, she listened to the complaints of Koreans living there and told us she would do what she could. [. . .] Is she cautious because this is connected with her father? [. . .] There hasn’t been any news.”

In the 1960s, former South Korean President Park Chung-hee (in power 1961-79) was able to secure loans worth 159 million marks (US$35 million), with the wages of South Korean nurses and miners as collateral.

More than 10 million South Koreans watched the film “Ode to My Father”, which features a South Korean who goes to work in the mines of West Germany. When the film was showing in theaters this past January, Park watched it with some of those former nurses and miners.

Park also took interest in the issue during her visit to Germany in March of last year, when she met the retired nurses and miners and their children during a dinner for overseas South Koreans.

“We provided between 20 million and 30 million won (15,980 and 23,966 Euros) in funds for operating the hospice every year between 2011 and 2014. Wages and rent are not eligible for support,” said the Overseas Koreans Foundation, which is affiliated with South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on June 18.

Around 150 people are paying members of Mitgehen, about 50 of whom are ethnic Koreans. “I can’t solely rely on miners, nurses, and other overseas Koreans who have led difficult lives for help,” Kim said.

“‘Ode to My Father’ doesn’t even show the way that we actually lived. We have missed South Korea our whole lives and eventually came to resent it. When one old woman who worked as a nurse in Germany came down with dementia, she forgot German, which she had been using for more than 30 years. Since then, she can only speak Korean and eat Korean food. How could a German take care of her?” Kim said.

“These people don’t have much longer left to live. There is a whole lot that needs to be done in the next 10 years for the ones who can’t come back to Korea.”

By Choi Woo-ri, staff reporter

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