I am One-Proud Niece

Come December of this year, my aunt, prime mover Fe Gimarino-Kim, will be receiving The Banaag Award as an achievement of the Filipino-Korean Spouses Association. The Banaag Award is given to Filipinos and foreign individuals or associations for advancing the cause of Filipino communities overseas or for supporting specific sectors or communities in the Philippines.

SEOUL—PEOPLE WHO HAD known Fe Gimarino-Kim as a mere housewife of a Korean electrical maintenance engineer would certainly wonder how she became a faculty approval specialist in the Pacific Far East Campus of Central Texas College in Incheon, South Korea.

As faculty approval specialist, Fe screens, evaluates and reviews the qualifications of American applicants for teaching jobs in this prestigious school before the deserving ones are finally selected by the campus dean for employment.

Her astronomical rise to this sensitive position came in 2001, after having been promoted from various posts in a span of only two years—from transcript clerk in July 1999 to payroll clerk and later administrative clerk in 2001.

But even her initial employment as transcript clerk was a big surprise, if not a miracle. She was the only Filipino among 12 applicants. The rest were Koreans, three of them graduates of US universities. What made it surprising? Fe was not eve computer literate.

Yet she got the nod of the five-member screening panel, all impressed by her attitude. When asked how well she could handle the computer, Fe honestly admitted her inexperience, but quickly added: “Just give me a month because I learn fast.”

Filipino wives to Koreans

Now Fe is also founder-president of the Filipino Korean Spouses Association (FKSA), whose mission is to help Filipinos like her who are married to Koreans and are living in Korea. Like others before her, communication was the main problem between Korean husbands and their Filipino wives, apart from their cultural differences.

Thus Fe looked for an organization willing to provide free Korean language lessons to various nationalities married to Koreans. In return, Fe teaches them English.

In June 2004, three years after founding the Filipino-Korean group, she petitioned the Philippine Embassy in Seoul to ask the Korean government that foreign women victims of domestic violence be accorded permanent residency status should their husbands divorce them. Her petition was not only acted upon by the Philippine embassy but also enacted into law by the Korean government.

“The Korean government also provides assistance, in cooperation with non-government organizations, in providing counseling services before, during and after inter-racial marriages. Both marrying couple must respect and adjust to each other’s culture for them to have a happy and lasting relationship,” explains Fe, who apparently knows whereof she speaks.

Successful marriage

Fe herself has a successful marriage. “Indeed, I am grateful to my husband for supporting me in helping our less fortunate kababayan (compatriots) in solving their marital problems,” Fe points out.

She says her husband even acts as interpreter and goes out of his way to give advice to his fellow Koreans.

Few knew, however, that she also once had that foreign language problem. Through self-study, she learned how to read and speak Korean, starting in 1997, only a year after she settled in Korea with her husband in 1996.

It was oceans and decades away childhood in Cebu from her humble beginnings in Asturias, Cebu where she was born to poor parents in 1958. Her father was a carpenter with not enough income to send all the children to school. The fourth in a brood of nine, Fe dreamed of finishing college to have a decent job and a better life for her family.

In her young mind, poverty could never be a hindrance to success in life. So she proceeded to work as a sales lady in a watch and jewelry service center in Cebu City, when her parents migrated to Davao City to look for a better life.

She later joined them in Davao, and worked as a photocopier operator. She still had that ambition to finish her education so in June 1978, at the age of 20, she enrolled in first year high school and attended evening classes.

The following year, she took the Philippine Examination Placement Test, an aptitude exam for those deserving to go to college without having to finish four years of high school education.

She finished Bachelor of Science in Commerce, major in Accounting, at the University of Mindanao in Davao City in October 1984 and landed a job in an accounting firm and later at a congressional district office in Mati, Davao Oriental.

In June 1989, Fe took up law and finished the course in 1993-94 but failed to take the bar examination. She was already managing her own business at that time and doing voluntary missionary work with the St. Mary’s Caritas Davao until she met and married her Korean husband in 1996.

The marriage didn’t dampen her passion for missionary work. Obviously, Fe brought it all with her all the way to Korea.

This fighter for foreign wives’ rights is a Cebuana – By Joy Gador, Inquirer – http://globalnation.inquirer.net