Air Force Veteran Needs Help Searching for Her Mom’s Family in South Korea
It would be great if this veteran is able to find her mother’s siblings to let them know of the dire health she is in:
Air Force veteran Isabelle Hyon DuCharme knew it would be a long shot.
The Salt Lake City, Utah, resident had spent several years attempting to reconnect her mother, Hyon Chu DuCharme, with the sister and two brothers she left behind in South Korea.
Hyon Chu had maintained regular contact with her siblings since immigrating to the United States in 1989, speaking to them often over the phone. However, when the DuCharmes’ home was foreclosed upon in the early 2010s, the family lost not only their phone number, but many of their possessions — including the address book containing the contact information of Hyon Chu’s relatives.
Stars & Stripes
You can read the rest at the link, but her mother, who’s maiden name is Hwang Hyon-chu was seriously injured in a car accident and then contracted the coronavirus at the hospital. She is now on a ventilator and in a dire condition. If anyone knows how to contact her siblings Isabelle can be contacted through her Twitter page.
My thoughts only, but if you haven’t talked in 8 years and don’t even connect through Kakaotalk, Facebook, or any other social media (as easy as it is this days), then you probably aren’t that close, after all.
@Robert: Considering the only phone number they had was a landline, it sounds like the family wasn’t doing very well financially. Furthermore, there are millions and millions of people in America who don’t know anything about social media and/or don’t own computers and have internet.
BUT! Maybe the publicity will reach someone that does have a connection and the family might want to reconnect, even if briefly, before the woman passes…
It’s a worthy ambition.
We had an elderly friend pass earlier this month. She arrived in the US in the early 1960s and had not been back to Korea since the 1990s. She was in a hospital-like facility for something like Alzheimer’s or Dementia and contracted COVID-19, poor thing. Her family had apparently decided it was too difficult to even write letters or pick up the phone for the last 15-20 years…
We should all be better than that. Even if we’re not Korean. What was that old AT&T advert? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OapWdclVqEY
Social Media came through….
“· Jan 17
We video chatted & saw our ENTIRE family (mom’s siblings & all of our cousins) using a translator, &then they got to do a video call with my mom in the hospital to talk to her while she’s in her coma.
I cannot tell you how grateful we are.
Thank you everyone.Heart suitLoudly crying faceFlag of South Korea #helpforhyon”
https://twitter.com/isybellex3/status/1350770402713362433
Great to hear this worked out. Considering the publicity it received and the information she had it seemed eventually someone would be able to connect the dots on this.
Huzzah!!