Many Koreans born in the early and mid 20th century led extraordinary lives that were buffeted by colonialism and the cruelty of the cold war division of the Korean peninsula. But the life of Cecilia Kim, who has died aged 89, was more extraordinary than most.
Born in Seoul under Japanese rule in the early 1930s, as a teenager she joined the North Korean army during the Korean war, and afterwards became one of the first women to graduate as a doctor, in the late 50s. But she later suffered internal exile and dreadful ordeals before leaving in the 90s and making her way to London, where she lived in retirement for the last part of her life.
I discovered much of this when I worked with Cecilia a few years ago, recording her life story as part of an oral history project at Soas, University of London.
She told me she was born in Seoul, where earnings from the family upholstery business allowed her to go to the prestigious Sungshin girls’ school, after Japan surrendered to the Allies and Korea was liberated in 1945.
When the Korean war broke out and the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) occupied Seoul in 1950, Kim was drawn by the occupiers’ promise of free tuition at the new Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang. She left her family and school behind to become an army nurse in a KPA unit.
But when the war ended in 1953 she had to fight tooth and nail to actually get to study medicine. Eventually she did make it to the capital and entered Pyongyang Medical University in 1955.
In 1960 she graduated and took on a job as a doctor of internal medicine at the Pyongyang Imsang hospital. However, the good years living in Pyongyang were not to last, and in 1973, as her South Korean origins began to count against her, she was sent into exile in the north-east of the country to work in a coal mine.
In 1978 she was allowed to return to medicine as a GP in Kyongwon county, close to the Chinese border. As a single parent with a young daughter to support, when famine struck North Korea in the 90s she used her scientific knowledge to make home-made liquor to sell on the black market and therefore to buy enough food to survive. In 1998 she fled across the border into China and then to South Korea.
To Cecilia’s disappointment it was not easy to adjust to life back in the south. Everyone and everything had changed beyond recognition, and so in her 70s she decided to embark on a new chapter in the UK.
The thread through Kim’s life was her pride and determination, and she remained deeply proud of her achievements in the face of adversity.
She is survived by her daughter and two granddaughters.
