South London FFWPU community on a great day out (click to enlarge)

On the 24th of May over 120 people from South London Community (young & old) gathered at Richmond Park. After setting up base camp and taking a group picture, the majority set off around the park (some never left base camp).

Their brief was to go around the park 8 miles (12km) in a creative way in order to raise money for chairs (£25 each) for the South London Peace Embassy.

Some ran – others walked, some went on bikes – others on tandem bikes, some went by scooter – others by roller skates. We even had some go on stilts and three legged.

I was at a reception hosted by the Embassy the other night and inevitably the conversation reached the “And what nationality are you?” topic. But this time, the conversation actually led somewhere really interesting. When I mentioned Korea, the American diplomatic officer that I was talking to lit up and got excited because he and his wife had been there on assignment when their daughter was born. And of course, he was talking about ho nice the culture was. But the fascinating thing that he said to me was that at the time of the Virginia Tech massacres, people stood outside of the Embassy building there and apologized to the Americans on behalf of the Korean people. And naturally, because Americans, resonating with individuality in their core, said “No, no. Don’t apologize. You didn’t kill anyone.” But the Koreans said firmly, “No, but he was Korean. We are sorry that a Korean person did this to your students.”

It left me a bit dumb-founded. What a heart of solidarity. I mean, I can’t imagine many Americans saying something like that if the ethnicities of the situation were reversed. It’s things like that that make me proud to be part of the Korean culture. It’s a level of heart that I hope to instill in my children, that we are all connected, all family.

Of course, the cynic in me wonders if maybe they said that in the hopes that they’d score brownie points towards getting their visas..