Professor Yiombi Thona: Enduring Dark Turmoil before Experiencing Bright Peace

Can you imagine?

First, picture yourself at school, living kilometers away and crying yourself to sleep.

Second, visualize traveling over 700 kilometers, on foot and by car, waiting for bridges to be repaired, moving with swollen legs and suffering from sickness. In the course of two months, you finally arrive, only to be told that you will have to apply next semester in order to get into your desired university program.

Last, envision fleeing your own country, because another country’s government has turned against you. You must gain refugee status while not knowing a new county’s language or culture.

How would you feel? Professor Yiombi Thona does not have to imagine, as they are portions of his story. Despite these adverse scenarios, Thona still considers himself a positive person, only describing the negative for contextual purposes.

On November 9, Thona shared his perspectives on life as a refugee during a GIC Talk. The title of his presentation: “From dog feeding to University Professor: A trip to ‘benchmark,’” allowed Thona to show his transition from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Republic of Korea. Thona “benchmarked” his talk, as summarizing his own life story has proven to be challenging. During an additional interview on November 1, Thona described, in specific detail, how he came to Asia from Africa.

Thona’s life began in Western Congo born into a kingdom family, as royalty comes from both sides. Still today, his brother and other family members are tribal rulers in the Congo. If Thona were king, his highest value would be placed on people rather than materials. “People living as humans are money. And everyone I see, they are human beings, like me. So I would never support injustice,” Thona explained.

Changes occurred in Thona’s childhood when Thona’s father, the king, was “arrested” and deported to Belgium to pursue further studies. Thona’s father, a doctor, later returned to his village, not desiring to stay overseas or in one of Congo’s major cities, so that he could provide free medical aid to his people. This fond memory of loyalty and service is one that Thona proudly remembers of his dad.

Thona’s first challenge was moving against his will to study in school at the age of 13. His father feared that if Thona stayed in his village any longer, Yiombi would not have otherwise received an education. So Thona was educated, at a costly price. Since school, Thona has never returned nor ever intends to return to his village.

After high school, Thona decided he wanted to go further, educationally and geographically. Making the two-month trek to apply at the University of Kinshasa in Kinshasa, Congo, only to be rejected, was discouraging, as Thona desired to walk in his father’s professional footsteps. Those in administration checked availability in several of the university’s programs, despite the school year already having begun. They found an opening in the Economics department. Thona knew he could not make the return trip without even attempting university, so he applied and was accepted into this department.

University residents were informed of Thona’s financial situation, and a priest graciously supported him financially during his time of studying. After a fully-funded first year and with the second just about to begin, the priest died in a car accident. Thona once again lacked support, but he still wanted to study. Finding a temporary solution, Thona left school, moved into the city of Kinshasa, started teaching high school mathematics part-time for one year and saved enough money to return to university the next year. He finished his university degree four years later (Typical Congolese undergraduate programs take five years to complete). Thona then went on to pursue his Masters.

While finishing his Doctorate, one of Thona’s professors asked him about another type of job. “I changed my life,” Thona stated, after explaining how he agreed, applied and was accepted to work with the National Intelligence Agency as a spy. The first year Thona was trained as an informant to access information regarding professors and students. While supervisors said that Thona was great at his line of work, his reaction looking back is, “I am sorry for what I did.”

For the first time, everything seemed to be going in his favor. He knew life would change slightly, especially during his second year when he traveled for work. Everything, however, changed. “I got support from colleagues and directly bought my car,” Thona explained, as he also became more trusted with classified information that very few in the Congo knew.

For eight years, Thona stated that he felt like a human being while working for the government. Before and after that time, up until his current work at Gwangju University as a professor, Thona felt he was just struggling. “Since the first grade, I had one pair of trousers and one t-shirt. If they were dirty, I would wash them at night. And the next morning, I would put them on and go. And if the weather was a little bit cold and the clothes were not dry, I had to wear them.”

The greatest challenge Thona has faced was escaping the Congo. According to Thona, the Rwanda Genocide weakened Congo’s government. Rwanda’s former Tutsi and Hutu tribes (in the name of peace, all Rwanda citizens are now classified as Rwandan) were in conflict, especially in 1994. After the assassinations of the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, the minority Tutsis (estimated at 15 percent of Rwanda’s population) gained national control, forcing the majority Hutus (roughly 85 percent) to leave Rwanda. Thona stated that the United Nations was responsible for funneling all refugees into the Congo.

Having the Rwandan army, bank and government officials present in the Congo influenced and transformed Thona’s government. Thona could no longer report what was really happening with the internal reorganizing of his government. His estimates claim that 60 percent of officials in the Congo were actually Rwandan.

Thona thus had three options: “jail, die, or refugee.” Choosing the last option, he escaped, after his third period of imprisonment and then headed to Beijing, China, which Thona described as a non-viable option for staying. The world’s most populated country has never aaaaccepted refugee applications. Furthermore, the Congo and China have strong ties diplomatically, so with Thona as an enemy of the Congo, he was an enemy of China, too.

After failing to find refuge at the Thai and Ethiopian embassies, Thona approached the Korean embassy. Three days later, he was approved for a Korean visa and boarded ships, which he thought were heading to Pyongyang. Instead, Thona found himself between Incheon and Seoul, mistaking the cities as “one big city, with buildings and roads everywhere.”

Thona’s first word for Korea was “strange.” “The people were strange. In my country, when you pass people, people on the streets walk slowly. If you see people walking fast, there is a problem. But, everyone was walking quickly in Seoul, so I thought, ‘Oh, is there a problem here? Is there war? What is going on here?’”

It was 2002, and Thona started to adjust to his new life in Seoul, learning Korean by using French as a medium, and later, teaching himself English. Despite experiencing multiple misfortunes, Thona kept going. On his third day in Korea, consuming a bottle of soju, mistaking it for a bottle of water, left him recovering from his first and only hangover. (Remembering his Catholic upbringing at age 13, he does not drink alcohol.) During his first month in Korea, his first job, dog-feeding, was technically illegal. During his first few years in Korea, Thona was promised work that never materialized. Thona had also been hospitalized twice for serious injuries acquired while working temporary jobs.

The greatest mishap though, Thona claims, was his misunderstanding and incorrectly answering questions during his preliminary application for Korea’s refugee visa status, delaying his refugee visa for six years. Compared to three of Thona’s friends from Congo, who were arrested the same day, and who fled the same day and applied for refugee status in Europe around the same time, applied and were granted the same status after five months.

Despite the darkness, Thona has kept walking toward the light, now having reached a piece of it in Gwangju, the City of Light. Thona even agreed that it is right for him to be within the “Human Rights heart” of Korea. His faith in God as a Christian, and the support of his own family, a wife and now four children, have inspired him to persevere. Once in Korea, Thona received overwhelming support as a refugee spokesperson from multiple television, newspaper and magazine affiliates asking him to share his story. During that period, Thona was approached by Dr. Kim Hyuk-Jong, the current president of Gwangju University, to teach as a professor in Gwangju. The interviewing committee was so impressed with Thona that instead of contacting him after the usual two weeks, they asked him 30 minutes after his appointment to return and sign his contract as a professor. Now in Gwangju, Thona spends most weekdays teaching over 200 university students every semester, while other weekdays he spends in Seoul teaching in other capacities.

After moving from Africa to Asia, learning from past mistakes and starting to follow cultural differences, Thona showed he wanted to learn from the beginning of his time in Korea. “My point was to understand this country. I studied and listened of how these people live, and I made my own strategy. ‘How can I live with them?’ So, I gave up some [parts] of my culture, just to agree with them, and then found out, ‘Oh, this country is not difficult.’ If you understand this culture, if you try to integrate, there is no problem. You can live peacefully.”

Thona additionally explained that life is short. “So, since we don’t know what will happen, make peace with everybody.” His vision for peace starts with the foreigners in Korea, then, it moves toward assisting citizens in other countries. Then, someday, Thona expressed, “I want to go back home” to Congo, where he can be on the forefront forces advocating for peace.

His work with the Red Cross to assist those in and near Seoul affected by flooding demonstrates how helping in small ways provides significant breakthroughs with people’s thought processes. “After they saw me helping, Koreans invited me to their humanitarian institute to talk about why I did this. They said, ‘Oh, African people, they are kind.’ If we can change how we share, I think we can live more peacefully. … We can change, so we need to move from instability to stability.”

Thona’s first book, written in Korean, has been released and is available at the GIC at a discounted cost. Thona’s second book, also written in Korean, will be released in early 2014. Thona looks forward to speaking again at the GIC in the future. “I would like to keep talking as friends,” he said to properly conclude his GIC Talk.