The etymology of compassion is Latin, meaning co-suffering.. Compassion involves feeling for another and is a precursor to empathy, the feeling as another capacity for better person centered acts of active compassion, in common parlance active compassion is the desire to alleviate another's suffering.
The Hmong people are in the U.S. as victims of US policies in the Vietnam War and then victims of persecution by Laos after the war. There are others who supported the U.S. but are still in Asia, facing persecution for their support of America. Many escaped to Thailand, but many of them have been forced back to Laos.
Hundreds of thousands of Hmong have since left Southeast Asia and brought the intriguing Hmong culture to distant parts of the world. About 3 million Hmong remain in China, 780,000 in Vietnam, 460,000 in Laos, and 150,000 in Thailand. Approximately four million people around the world people speak Hmong, a tonal language. In the 1950s, Christian missionaries developed a written form of Hmong based on the Roman alphabet.