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by Suk-Chong Yu (Author)
Rebuilding the Fallen Fence is a moving and inspiring memoir from a Korean-American elder who recounts the story of how his family, torn apart in the Korean War, found restoration and healing as they built new lives in the decades after the war. During and after the Korean War, Suk-Chong Yu's family was torn apart and the survivors scattered to the east, west, south, and north. His father was kidnapped by the communists; his mother was miraculously rescued from the threshold of an execution ground but nonetheless died soon after the war, leaving five orphaned children ranging in age from eight to twenty-one.
Each family member's path was unique, but now, seventy years after the end of the Korean War, the scattered pieces have been put back together one by one, bringing restorations and healing. The youngest child was adopted by an American family soon after the war, and later as adults, four other siblings emigrated to the United States (one by way of Germany) to join their brother. Recently, after decades of no contact, they were at last able to visit with their two sisters who had defected to North Korea during the war. Through time, marriages, and new generations, the restored fence of the family has expanded wider and longer, crossing over different ideologies and races.
Suk-Chong Yu's own personal story weaves throughout this memoir. As a young child, images from the war were seared into his mind, never to be forgotten. As a young adult, he went to seminary and became a pastor. He emigrated to the United States with his wife and young son in the 1970s and served both English-speaking and Korean-speaking congregations of the United Methodist Church in a career that took him from the Pacific Northwest to Tennessee to San Francisco to Reno, Nevada.
The story of the Yu family reflects the tragedy experienced by the Korean people in the modern era from a divided country, war, family separation, ideological conflicts, and migration. It is also a testimony to how those in the Korean diaspora have overcome all these pains, hardships, resentments (called han in the Korean language) and pioneered new lives with great resilience.
