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Daein Kang, Koreatown oral surgeon who became a crusader for democracy in his homeland, dies at 66

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Daein Kang, a Koreatown oral surgeon whose activism in his homeland put him front and center in efforts to forge a relationship between South and North Korea, has died.

Kang was one of the first oral surgeons in Koreatown and went on to a life of activism in South Korea, where he founded medical centers, became a confidant of then-President Kim Dae-jung and pressed for improved human rights and normalized relations between the two Koreas.

Kang was born in Yeongam, South Korea, and his life was shaped early and sharply by the Korean War.

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His father died in a massacre in the early days of the war, leaving his mother to raise six children. When an older brother, Daeyong Kang, vanished while studying in Seoul, the family was enveloped by the gnawing mystery of his disappearance.

For years the family searched for him, but any trace seemed to have been swept away in the war.

Daein Kang immigrated to Los Angeles with his wife, Youngmi Kim, in 1976, cleaning offices in downtown L.A. while putting himself through dental school. He later opened a dental practice in Koreatown, specializing in implants and oral surgery. The couple raised three sons in the then-largely-immigrant community.

Kang’s mother, though, never abandoned her search for her oldest child. She had immigrated to America in 1976 and leaned on government agencies, relief groups and war veterans for assistance. Often they urged her to move on — her son was missing and presumed dead.

In a first-person account in the Los Angeles Times in 1991, Kang’s nephew wrote about the numbing existence of growing up in a family with one member missing.

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“I grew up with no music in the house, because it reminds my grandmother of her son,” wrote Hyungwon Kang, a Times photographer at the time. Even on his aunt’s wedding day, he wrote, there was no music.

But in the spring of 1991, a letter arrived from Pyongyang, North Korea. Her son was alive. He had been drafted to fight with the North Korean People’s Liberation Army while studying in Seoul. He now worked for the government and was married with five children. He sent along a thumb-sized photograph.

“The photo never left her side,” Hyungwon Kang wrote. “She walked around the house with it and placed it by her bed at night.”

Kang’s mother initially planned to go to North Korea to visit the son she hadn’t seen in decades. She bought suits and sport coats for the grandsons she had yet to meet and several boxes of nail clippers she bought in Koreatown. She thought they might be useful for her son to give as gifts to his friends.

Before her flight, though, she suffered a stroke and slipped into a coma.

At the urging of Kang and other family members, the North Korean government agreed to let Daeyong Kang visit his ailing mother. But when she died before he could visit, they pulled his travel papers.

Finally, after more negotiation with the government, Kang stood at Los Angeles International Airport in the summer of 1991 waiting to greet a brother he had not seen in more than four decades.

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It was a moment of triumph for a family that had suffered for so long. It was also a moment that raised international hope that relations between the U.S. and North Korea might be warming.

The reunion marked the first time since the Korean War that a civilian from North Korea was allowed to visit U.S. soil.

Devoutly interested in his homeland, Daein Kang supported the democratic movement in South Korea at a time of political turmoil and authoritarian rule. He became a friend and ally of Kim Dae-jung, then a dissident living as an exile in the U.S. after a military dictator had sentenced him to death. Kim later became president, after first surviving three assassination attempts and six years in prison.

Kang, who worked with Amnesty International and was a founding member of the Korean American Institute for Human Rights, worked with Kim to help implement the leader’s “Sunshine Policy,” meant to open dialogue and relations between the two Koreas, which had been fractured since the war. Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, but the policy ultimately failed and North Korea distanced itself from the world stage.

Kang also threw himself into medicine in South Korea, opening a 350-bed general hospital in Bucheon and later spending his own money to help establish the Bucheon Geriatric Medical Center, employing Sweden’s expertise in the field. In 2012, he was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, a reward for civic merit bestowed by that country’s king and queen.

Kang died Jan 28 in San Mateo. His death was not immediately announced. Family members said they were told that the older brother, Daeyong Kang, died in 2013 in Pyongyang.

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Kang is survived by his wife; sons, Robin, Thomas and Eugene; brother, Daeyang; three sisters, Sumi, Haengja and Sungja; and seven grandchildren.

steve.marble@latimes.com

twitter.com/stephenmarble

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