Air-Crash Widow Faces New Anguish -- Husband Died On Kal 007; Kin On Guam Plane

GLENDALE, Calif. - Meena Park had felt this anguish before. The waiting. The agony. The fear.

Fourteen years after her husband was killed when a Soviet missile downed a Korean plane, Park found herself waiting again to hear the fate of loved ones feared dead in another crash.

Park's youngest sister, Meejin Park Lee, and 8-year-old niece, Tiffany Kang, were among the 254 people aboard Korean Air Flight 801, which crashed in Guam.

Nine of Lee's in-laws were also on the flight, all of them headed to the Pacific island from Seoul for a five-day vacation. Tiffany had gone to South Korea by herself to spend the summer with relatives, leaving her mother behind.

It was not immediately clear if any of Park's relatives were among the 28 survivors.

"What else?" Park asked, sobbing. What else could possibly happen to break her heart again?

Her husband died in September 1983, when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 strayed into Soviet air space and was shot down. All 269 people on board died.

Korean Air, which dropped "Lines" from its name after the 1983 crash, has figured largely in the family's lives.

Park, Tiffany and Tiffany's mother, Kelly Kang, live in this suburb 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Kang was a flight attendant for the airline for 11 years. But it didn't help her find information any sooner. Hours after the crash, they still didn't know the fate of their relatives.

"When I call the 800 number, they say call back. But the line is always busy," Park said.

"Fourteen years ago, they released the names after 12 hours," she said. "I would have hoped they could have improved since then."

A list of passengers was released about 12 hours after the crash. A "Diffany Kang" and "Meejin Park" were on the list, but it did not say if they were among those who survived.

Park, 41, waited for word in Kang's art studio.

Unframed paintings, in bright tempera colors, cover every inch of space. A citation hangs from the wall proclaiming Tiffany the second-place winner of the Los Angeles City Council 1997 Human Relations Art Contest.

Next to it is a photograph of Tiffany, head slightly bowed, shyly standing before the council - a little girl in a white dress with grown-up platform shoes.

"Tiffany has loved art since she was old enough to hold a pencil," said Park, who last talked to Tiffany three days ago, when she proudly announced she had lost a tooth while eating a cucumber.

Kang is inconsolable, Park said.

"Her life was Tiffany, that is all she has left after the divorce," she said. "Her life was constructed around Tiffany."

The airline wants family members to fly to Seoul, but Park and Kang want to go to Guam.

"I told them I could help them. I told them I could give them a hand," Park said. "And I would help them dig in the mud."