“Godmother of North Korean Disabled Athlete Sports” Sue Kinsler (Korean name: Shin Yeong-soon, 72, photo), president of Kinsler Foundation, expressed a different perspective toward North Korea’s participation in the Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics, which are opening March 9. She established ties with the Korean Federation for the Protection of the Disabled in 2005, has played a pioneering role in North Korea’s disabled athlete sports, and is the only foreigner currently working cooperatively with the Federation.
Kinsler, who also co-directs North Korea’s National Cooperative Office for Support of Disabled Children, travels back and forth between the U.S. and Pyongyang, carrying out activities in support of North Korean disabled persons. She is now in Korea to assist the North Korean Paralympics team, and this past February 27, I met her at the Korean Church Centennial Memorial Building in Jongno-gu, Seoul.
In spring last year, Kinsler suggested that the North, as a Paralympics member nation, prepare to take part in the winter events. At that time in North Korea, however, there were no Winter Paralympics athletes. The matter of Olympic participation had not yet been decided, and there was scant time to prepare, but the Kinsler Foundation supported the selection and training of athletes, and augmented the North Koreans’ preparations for the Winter Paralympics.
Foundation-supported athletes Ma Yu-cheol and Kim Jeong-hyeon are both former table tennis players. “Due to his outstanding sports ability, Kim Jeong-hyeon was chosen as a table tennis player, but his artificial leg kept falling off when he played,” Kinsler said. “It seemed that skiing would not cause this problem, so I proposed that he try Nordic skiing.”
Last December, the Foundation arranged for a Canadian coach to come to Changbai Shan (Baekdu Mountains) in China, and train the North Korean athletes in Nordic skiing techniques. During the two-week training period, the athletes studied skiing the first week, and spent the remaining week in all-out physical training. This January, they participated in the Nordic Agitos Camp and the “2017-2018 World Para Nordic Skiing World Cup” in Germany, at the invitation of the International Paralympics Committee.
President Kinsler, who communicates with the North Korean athletes as “mother,” reported that through their training in China and Germany, they have gained the confidence and skill needed to participate in Olympic events. “Ma Yu-cheol commented, ‘I have confidence that I can do better now than when I played table tennis,’” she said. “The training period was short, so medals are not very likely, but I’m happy that new possibilities have been opened up.”
Kinsler is the daughter-in-law of missionary Francis Kinsler (Korean name: Gwon Se-yeol, 1904~1992), who from his base in Pyeongyang carried out mission activities in all parts of the Korean peninsula over a 42-year period. She also, together with her husband Rev. Arthur Kinsler, worked in South Korea as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church USA for 39 years, starting in 1972, in ministries helping disabled persons in the South and the North.
“With the opportunity of the Olympics, and the North Korean athletes’ team coming and going between North and South by land and sea, it’s as if the road to peace has opened,” she said. “As one of the same Korean people, and as a Christian, I will continue working to plant hope in North Korean disabled persons, toward peace in this land.”
Reporter Yang Minkyeong (grieg@kmib.co.kr), with Marion Kim (marionkkim@icloud.com)
Top photo by senior reporter Kang Min Seok
Original Article in Korean:
북한 장애인 체육의 代母… 킨슬러재단 수 킨슬러 대표 내한: 평창 동계패럴림픽대회 출전하는 북한 선수 양성
