Family Story...

To Whom It May Concern,


RE: Hardships Caused by Corporate Manipulation


My name is Suely Jeon. If you knew me, you’ll see that I’m just an ordinary student, trying to be an active member of the community by getting involved in various programs and volunteering. I come from a Korean family, but I was born and raised for most of my life in Brazil. Many people I meet are surprised by this combination and admire the fact my parents have made my sisters and I learn our Korean heritage as well as our birth country’s customs.

My parents are Chong Jin Jeon and Jin Sook Lee. These names might not sound familiar, but if you Google my father’s name, you will find on the first hit that he is one of the “Wanted” person in the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). No one, except my family, knows this part of me. I have never shared this side of mine, my family’s story, to anyone because I didn’t know how to say it or from where to start it. I didn’t know how people would react to it. And thus, since I am no spokesperson, I will write the story of my family and reveal to you the heart-breaking realities of the past ten years that I have kept from sharing.

It’s been ten years since my mom, sisters, and I have lived with my father. It’s been ten years since my father has been treated like a human with rights. Over the past ten years, my father’s story has been told by lawyers, policemen, reporters and circulated around in rumors. He’s story has been covered in two separate, distant countries—Brazil and Korea. The first hit I’ve mentioned in the Google results is one of those stories. These stories are crafted lies that have caused the forceful separation in my immediate family. These fabrications have caused emotional pain, mental and physical suffering, as well as the destruction of my entire family.

My father is the youngest son out of five children. His family moved to Brazil when he was twelve years old. At a young age, he had become the door-to-door salesman, selling clothes that his parents, sisters, and brothers had made. Since then, he began developing his work in the clothing industry, and soon evolved to become the manager of his own store. He met my mother, who was also an immigrant from Korea, and had three daughters: Jeniffer, Bonnie, and I.

During his marriage, my father’s family decided to move to the United States, but he chose to stay and continue his life in Brazil. My father worked with my mother’s family, teaching her younger brothers the business of managing a clothing retail store. His early work experience allowed him to further expand in the business, which provided the opportunity for my uncles to become managers of the attire stores, and for my father to explore in a different industry.

In 1993, my father began working in the automobile industry and his ability to speak both Portuguese and Korean had become an asset in providing a bridge in the business relationship between Asia Motors do Brasil (Brazil) and Kia/Asia Motor Corporation (South Korea). His efforts opened many trade opportunities, and he was acknowledged for his work. Once again, my father had used his early work experience to expand further and to learn more about commerce.

My father was not an executive or any high-ranking personnel, but as a facilitator/translator he worked among the executive workforce assisting their tasks. Many of the stories written about my father call him a “corporate fraud”, but how could he have cheated if he doesn’t have the power or the right to make decisions at a corporate level? None of the reporters, who have created this fake new character of my father, have called him for an interview or asked him what his stance was. As a reporter, how could you not use the primary source, the person who your article is written about? What are interviews for? I guess those reporters knew that their stories were fictitious and that interviewing my father would not provide the information that these biases were seeking for.

One of the reasons why I kept my father’s and family story for so long was because the people, who have read the false media jargon, and those who knew my father before the delusive extravaganza, reacted as if those stories were true! They began pointing fingers at my family and turning their backs away, treating us with repulsion.

In January 2003, my grandmother passed away from liver cancer. She was my father’s mom, who was always proud of him and could never stop describing her appreciation for his constant effort of always keeping her fulfilled. She passed away in the midst of the lies and accusations. She did not survive to see her innocent son, claiming his name back without any dishonest association. My father blames himself to be the reason of her death. He believes the allegations against him had caused her too much pain and developed to a physical illness.

When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer in late 2001, my father, mother, sisters and I couldn’t even visit her. Our freedom had become limited, as my father was increasingly known to be a bandit. For ten years now, my family has been fighting for his innocence, for his right and freedom, for our right and liberty to be a family once again. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve visited my cousins and my dad’s family in the United States. I have never seen my cousin Kathy, who is now seven years old. I still haven’t visited my grandmother’s graveyard to show her the respect she deserves. One of the most devastating moments during these years of agony was when my father couldn’t attend his own mother’s funeral. Many years had already passed by since my father has seen his mother, and he still wasn’t allowed to see her for one last time on her deathbed. Now, he will never see her again. These years of inaccurate accusations led to my grandmother’s death, the constraint of my family’s liberty, and the obliteration of families—my father’s family of orientation, his family of procreation, as well as my mother’s family.

Over the past years, Korea had developed immensely due to investment on education and the enforcement of national products. Hyundai Motors Co. is one of the companies that grew from such enforcement and now owns almost half of the market share in the Korean automobile industry. This is my father’s opponent, Hyundai. This monstrous corporation has set my father as a patsy ten years ago and since then, it has been trying to annihilate my father’s life along with his entire family and associates.

My father has served in a penitentiary for almost four years now. For the last two years, he’s been kept in Brazil and the rest in Korea. When he was imprisoned in Korea, my sisters and I did not know the reason for his absence. We were quite young, I was eleven years old, and my mom, trying to shield us from such trauma, never told us where he was. I thought he was on a long-term business trip.

My sister Jeniffer discovered his situation when she read a letter from my father with the Korean penitentiary stamp imprinted on the back of the letter. At first, she was confused, and my mom explained to her, briefly, about my father’s situation. After that, my sisters and I began writing letters to my father, as that was the only way of communication. We could not visit him as his physical condition was very deteriorated.

My father suffered from lower back pain caused by the stress of coping with the lies written about him and from his past co-workers who have shamelessly lied in their depositions and have deceived him for the monetary baits set by Hyundai. My father had gone through surgery on his lower disc of the spine, and within a week of surgery, he was sent back to the penitentiary under Hyundai’s pressure. Due to the lack of post-surgery recovery, my father could not move for days and simple tasks like going to the bathroom was a challenge. While my father was put away, taken away from us, my mother not only took my father’s role in the family but she became my father’s spokesperson. And she is still fulfilling such roles.

My mother is a hero. She literally fights for justice. She is the most honorable and respectable being I know. My mother has been battling for my father’s innocence since the beginning. Before my sisters and I knew about his distorted reputation, she met with lawyers and Hyundai employees for my father’s freedom. She did whatever they asked for, believing that this would bring back my family together. She paid Hyundai ten million U.S. dollars for my father’s release charges just to find Hyundai accusing my father once again and asking for compensation again.

Imagine this constant harassment multiplied by ten years. That is what my mom has been going through to this day. My mom stopped meeting her friends, she stopped attending events held by the Korean community and she stopped caring for herself. Instead, my mother fights for my father, and such long-term battle has affected her physical health and consequently my entire family’s well being.

My mother is the pillar of my family. As she battles for my father’s innocence and freedom, she has also raised three amazing daughters. My mother works with her family in the apparel retail store that my father had once started. With the money she earns, she pays for all the housing expenses, for my sisters’ and my education, as well as for my father’s excruciating lawyer fees and charges. She manages two retail stores, and the profit she earns barely makes the breaking point with the expenses. My mother has asked, many times, to family members as well as friends and has sold many of my family’s assets to pay for my father’s legal expenses. Fighting a mega-corporation like Hyundai requires a lot of resources; since they have more than enough money to pay for the best legal representation possible.

During my father’s trial in Korea, no one listened to him. Those trials can’t even be called trials. The Korean justice system, police, and the press all believed in Hyundai’s claim. Hyundai has developed South Korea’s economy exponentially and has become the representative of the country. Despite Hyundai’s questioning methods of becoming a leading corporation, it is very powerful and influential in Korea. That is why my family needed to come back to Brazil and try to solve the case there, where we believed Hyundai’s power to be not so affluent.

In September 2001, my family moved back to Brazil because no one listened or tried to help my father in Korea. However, even in Brazil we were harassed. Hyundai and the Korean government made an accord with the Brazilian government to find my father. Thus, my father was under the constant watch of the Brazilian authorities. His move to Brazil was announced as “escaped” from Korea. Watching my parents live separately, even though they were not divorced, and meeting my father at secret spots as well as watching our language on the phone in fear of phone taps was how my family lived until July 13th, 2006. This is the day the Brazilian police arrested my father.

For five years, since we moved back to Brazil, my family lived in a fearful life of losing my father. He was barely able to attend Jenie’s graduation in May 2004, and during my graduation in 2006, he was absent. He couldn’t even make it to Bonnie’s, his baby daughter’s, graduation either this year (2008) because he is still in the Federal Police penitentiary in São Paulo.

My sister Jeniffer has been assisting my mom and following my dad’s case over the past two years, since the day my father has been admitted to the penitentiary in São Paulo. She has stopped her education to lend a hand to my mother who has been struggling alone over the past ten years. Just like my mother, my sister has stopped everything that she has built over her life, to focus in my father’s liberty. Being the first born, Jenie has always been the bearer of responsibility. She takes care of Bonnie and me as well as my mother, who has become very fragile over the past years. Jenie has taken on my mother’s role, as well as my father’s, while maintaining her position as the eldest and battling alongside my mom for my father’s innocence. By taking on such tasks, Jenie has matured much faster than her peers.

I admire her for her unconditional love and support of the family. Her endless effort to bring the family together is beyond words. It is agonizing to see her and my mother suffer from an extensive battle of bringing my father back, and reuniting my family.

My sister Bonnie is the baby of the family and the most heartfelt one. Despite being separated from my father since age nine, Bonnie and my father share many similar characteristics. Bonnie’s athleticism, taste and talent for music, friendliness and easy-going attitude is just like my father’s. She is an active person, who not only participates in sports, but also in school plays as well as student council. Bonnie has never once complained about my family’s continuous absence in her band concerts, school productions, and sports games. She has always been understanding since little and is constantly supporting my mother and Jenie as they encounter endless hardships in bringing my father back to his family.

It’s been ten years since my family has lived together at home. Throughout those years, my family suffered from physical and mental illness, as well as emotional anguish. We’ve been tormented, tortured and torn to pieces. Over the past ten years, my family has experienced abominable atrocities that are depicted in dramatic movies—things that people believe not to be a reality. However, this is all true. A true story that I was afraid to share because I, myself, couldn’t believe it as a reality. There are many times that I hoped for the past ten years to be a nightmare, in which I could wake up and be back to living with my whole family.

I know and I believe that soon my family will be reunited. As the truth is revealed, my father will be known once again, this time as an honest man. After that, he will come back home. Over the past ten years my father missed many family moments. He missed on watching my sisters and I grow into young ladies. He missed our adolescent years and my sisters and I missed him when we needed a father figure. It is time for my father to come back home. It is time for justice. It is time for the truth to be known.

I ask for your help in telling others about my father. Let the truth be known. By doing so, my father will come back home. If you have any questions or would like to know how to help, you can contact my sisters and I. You can find our contact information at the bottom of the page.

Thank you for taking the time to read my family’s sorrowful story. Please help us in changing this story into a joyful one.



Sincerely,


Suely Jeon