AUGUST 10

Grandma Kim is waiting for us on the curb in front of her apartment. Instead of the expandable mega-bags that halmeonis traditionally cart to Korea, she has two small knapsacks — “only what I can carry myself.”

“You know what?” she confides as we get into Andy’s car. “I haven’t slept for three days. I keep waiting for this whole thing to vanish, like it was just a dream. Even when Tammy gave me the plane ticket, a part of me still didn’t believe it. Are we really going to the airport?”

Grandma Kim has been invited to join the North American delegation traveling to Seoul for this year’s historic 60th celebration of Gwangbokjeol, which means “the return of light.”

August 15, 1945 — or Pal-il-o, which translates to “8-1-5” — was the day Koreans emerged from the 35-year darkness of Japanese colonization. But the very day of its liberation was also the first day of Korea’s division into North and South. What makes this year’s Pal-il-o so special is that it marks the first joint North and South Korean celebration of independence. On this 60th anniversary, more than 200 North Korean delegates will cross the DMZ to join 400 South Korean delegates, as well as 150 Korean emigrants now living in Australia, Europe, Japan, Canada and the United States, in celebration. The event symbolizes the Korean Peninsula’s acceleration toward peace and tongil (reunification) after the watershed Inter-Korean Summit of 2000.

Grandma Kim offers some snacks before boarding the plane for Korea.

An invitation as an official delegate to such a celebration is typically bestowed upon hulryunghan (prominent) people — church leaders, politicians, professors. Grandma Kim does not fit the profile: an 82-year-old immigrant who spends her retirement years organizing for the Los Angeles-based Bus Riders Union. The BRU, made up predominantly of black, Latino and Asian members decades her junior, is a civil rights and environmental justice organization that fights racial discrimination in the county’s public transit system. Her inspiring leadership in this struggle has gained Hee Pok Kim, a North Korea native, the nickname, “Grandma Kim.”

She doesn’t believe she deserves this invitation.

“Maybe I’d deserve this honor if I had 10 years under my belt, instead of just four,” she says, referring to her years of activism with the BRU. “Maybe if I had been able to achieve more ….”

In fact, over the past two years, she has increasingly questioned whether her organizing has fallen far short of her goals. As the BRU organizer who recruited Grandma Kim to the organization four years ago, I’ve been trying to help her dispel her sense of personal defeat. I try to remind her of her unique role leading the BRU’s 2001 breakthrough into Koreatown. She has inspired me and many second-generation Koreans across the United States to resist the deep streak of conservatism in our communities, daring us to fight on the side of immigrants, women, workers, the oppressed, the poor. But the truth is, her heroism is not easy to recognize or explain.