Also honored with Han were five other South Korean navy officers and sailors who were killed defending the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea. Han's widow had traveled five hours by bus from New York to attend the ceremony. "There's no sincere memorial like this in South Korea to honor the six sailors killed during the West Sea engagement," Kim said, her eyes closing gently. Known in the U.S. as Hanna Kim, she sat in the VIP section at the dedication. Her life could be the subject of a documentary.

After her husband was killed, Kim organized a memorial society for the servicemen who died in the battle. But she was frustrated by the South Korean government's downplaying and minimizing of the battle in its attempts to placate North Korea, and so she left her homeland in protest, boarding a plane for the U.S. in April 2005.

She arrived at New York City's JFK Airport with just US$500 in her hands. What she found in the U.S. was loneliness and penury. Kim had learned manicuring in Seoul, but the American beauty parlor she worked for shut down just a month after she got the job. She took to cleaning buildings in Chinatown at night to make a living. Later she sprained her wrists while moving boxes at a supermarket where she labored for six months.

A job as an accounting clerk at a food wholesaler brought some stability, though her ill health continued, including a near fatal two-month-long cough. Despite her physical hardships, she said the worst pain came from the whispering gossip of Korean-Americans in New York. "Though there weren't many of them, some Korean-Americans disliked me for having blamed the South Korean government and leaving the country. It made me pretty upset to know they saw me just some wretched woman."

Kim found comfort in a group of aging American veterans of the Korean War whom she came to know in Nov. 2003. Several of the veterans, including Francis R. Carroll, the chairman of the committee behind the Korean War Memorial in Central Massachusetts, invited her to dinners, traveled with her and supported her. Meeting with the veterans, Kim began adapting to American life more quickly. She improved her English by watching television, joined a church and removed the dark clouds from her face by finding a roommate.

Deeply moved by the caring of these "American grandfathers," Kim tried to repay their kindness by bringing some 500 badges to the dedication on Saturday. Half the badges featured images of the Taegukki and the Stars and Stripes, the other half featured the slogans "Korea remembers you" and "Let's keep brotherhood forever" in English. The attendees of the dedication wore the friendship badges proudly on their chests. "The dedication ceremony was all the more meaningful thanks to Hanna," one of the event organizers said.

After the ceremony, I turned on my computer and read the statement issued by North Korea, the one that cited the Declaration for Advancing Inter-Korean Relations and Peace and Prosperity -- which implies South Korea's concession on the NLL -- and that claimed that South Korean warships had violated its territorial waters. I hoped that Hanna Kim wouldn't happen to see the news that day, if at all possible.

This column was contributed by Lee Ha-won, the Chosun Ilbo's correspondent in Washington.