Suki Kim and Fathers' Day

On Sunday, June 25, 1950, North Korean bombs fell on Seoul, South Korea’s capital, and the civil war began.

It ended three years later, on July 27, 1953, with the same division as it had begun, with the Korean peninsula divided into two parts at the 38th parallel, communist to the North and a democratic-republic to the South. South Koreans now call the war, “the 6-2-5 Upheaval,” but the North Koreans call it “the Fatherland Liberation War,” even though no fatherland was ever liberated.

In 2011, Suki Kim, a Korean-American woman, then 41 years old, taught English in Pyongyang, North Korea. In 2...