"If Only I Could Have Held the Body and Cried"

Families of Guam KAL Crash Victims Seek Legal Action in the U.S.

"If I had at least seen the body, I could have held it and cried my heart out."

These are the tearful words of Kim Young-ran (44, Brooklyn resident), who lost her father in the Korean Air (KAL) plane crash in Guam on August 6th of last year.

Even after nearly eight months since the accident, the grief of the bereaved families remains unresolved.

Park Soon-eop (67), who suddenly lost her husband Kim Byung-gap (72) during his business trip to Guam, refused the 250 million won compensation that KAL offered uniformly to all families. Driven by the desire to seek justice, she came to the U.S. Park, whose two daughters live in New York, visited attorney Kim Dong-min’s office in Manhattan on the 3rd with her second daughter to share her painful story.

Park expressed frustration over the lack of sincerity shown by KAL and the Guam authorities after the accident.

"When I revisited Guam in March, they removed the memorial altar without consulting the bereaved families," Park lamented. She was outraged, saying, "It’s incomprehensible that they decided to cremate 54 burned bodies all at once, citing the impossibility of conducting further DNA analysis."

As a devout Buddhist, Park expressed her deep sorrow, saying, "I wanted to at least find my husband’s remains and bring him back to our hometown in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province." She was dissatisfied with the Guam authorities and KAL for handling the funeral in a careless manner, preparing a shabby urn, and seemingly trying to resolve the matter hastily.

With hearings on the cause of the accident still ongoing, Park believes that filing a lawsuit in the U.S. against KAL and the U.S. government might help ease her grief, even if only a little.

"It's not about the money," Park emphasized. "Many bereaved families rejected the lump-sum compensation and are struggling to manage their households amid the IMF crisis. This reflects how insincere KAL and the Guam authorities have been."

Park's second daughter, Kim, who accompanied her, added, "If our home country had been stronger, would the Guam authorities have treated the bereaved families so insincerely?" She continued, "The Guam accident cannot be forgotten until the full truth is revealed."

- Reporter Kim Joo-chan April 6, 1998 (Monday), JoongAng Ilbo, Korean Community Section 2 1998 Korean Air Guam Crash Related Article