Tuesday, 25 June 2019

A family from Angola has been stuck at Incheon International Airport in Korea for the past 6 months

On December 28, 2018 Nkuka Lulendo fled Angola with his wife and four young children. They sought refugee status in Korea, but have been stuck in terminal 1 of Incheon Airport ever since. In the video Lulendo tells the sad story of how he ended up in Korea. He was working as a taxi driver in Angola and he accidentally hit a police car. He's an ethnic minority, and he says the police imprisoned and tortured him for 10 days, and raped his wife, too.  A police officer who sympathized with him helped him escape, and so Lulendo gathered his family and left Angola as soon as they could. Now they live at the airport, sleeping on a large square couch. Lulendo says people have given them clothes and food.

The interviewer asked one of Lulendo's 9-year-old kids: "Do you want to go back to Angola or stay here in Korea?"

He said, "I’d like to go back if we weren’t in danger of dying."

Asian Boss, which produced the video, wrote: "Initially, we thought about helping the Lulendo family through crowdfunding. However, what they wanted more than money was raising awareness about their situation so they can have their asylum-application process expedited by the Korean government. If you want to help, just keep sharing this video until this story gets picked by mainstream media. The Korean government won't address this issue until there is enough media coverage on a global scale, so let's do our part."

 

<em>Image: YouTube</em>