Author Suk-Chong Yu’s New Book, “Rebuilding the Fallen Fence: A Korean-American Family,” is a Moving Story of a Korean Family’s Bond Despite Being Torn Apart

Seattle, WA, May 02, 2025 --(PR.com)-- Suk-Chong Yu, a retired minister of the United Methodist Church, has completed his new book, “Rebuilding the Fallen Fence: A Korean-American Family”: a powerful memoir that chronicles how the author’s family was torn apart and, in the years following the Korean War, managed to find each other once more on their road to healing.

Born in Korea during the Japanese occupation, author Suk-Chong Yu attended seminary in Korea and received a Bachelor of Arts from International College in Korea. He also holds a Master of Arts in journalism from Syracuse University, and a doctor of ministry from Claremont School of Theology. Yu served as editor of Christian Thought and taught at Chung-Ang University in Korea. After immigrating to the United States, he pastored churches in the Seattle area and a Korean church in San Francisco, the oldest Korean congregation in the US continent, until he became a district superintendent in the California-Nevada Conference. He was married to the late Reverend Yon Sil Yu, his seminary classmate, for fifty-eight years, and has been blessed with a son and three grandchildren.

“Rebuilding the Fallen Fence” is a moving and inspiring memoir from a Korean-American elder who recounts the story of how his family, torn apart in the Korean War, found restoration and healing as they built new lives in the decades after the war. During and after the Korean War, author Suk-Chong Yu’s family was torn apart and the survivors scattered to the east, west, south, and north. His father was kidnapped by the communists; his mother was miraculously rescued from the threshold of an execution ground but nonetheless died soon after the war, leaving five orphaned children ranging in age from eight to twenty-one.

Each family member’s path was unique, but now, seventy years after the end of the Korean War, the scattered pieces have been put back together one by one, bringing restorations and healing. The youngest child was adopted by an American family soon after the war, and later as adults, four other siblings emigrated to the United States (one by way of Germany) to join their brother. Recently, after decades of no contact, they were at last able to visit with their two sisters who had defected to North Korea during the war. Through time, marriages, and new generations, the restored fence of the family has expanded wider and longer, crossing over different ideologies and races.

The author’s own personal story weaves throughout this memoir. As a young child, images from the war were seared into his mind, never to be forgotten. As a young adult, he went to seminary and became a pastor. He emigrated to the United States with his wife and young son in the 1970s and served both English-speaking and Korean-speaking congregations of the United Methodist Church in a career that took him from the Pacific Northwest to Tennessee to San Francisco to Reno, Nevada.

Published by Covenant Books of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, Suk-Chong Yu’s new book reflects the tragedy experienced by the Korean people in the modern era from a divided country, war, family separation, ideological conflicts, and migration. It is also a testimony to how those in the Korean diaspora have overcome all these pains, hardships, resentments (called han in the Korean language) and pioneered new lives with great resilience.

Readers can purchase “Rebuilding the Fallen Fence: A Korean-American Family” at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Covenant Books is an international Christian owned and operated publishing house based in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Covenant Books specializes in all genres of work which appeal to the Christian market. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Covenant Books at 843-507-8373.