Families reunited after 57 years

Published on Saturday 26 September 2009 20:47

LEE Sun-ok is ready to die in peace. The 80-year-old widow yesterday saw her two sisters and a brother for the first time in six decades. Her family, like hundreds of thousands of others, was split by the war that tore Korea apart. Lee ended up in the capitalist and now wealthy south, her siblings in the secretive, communist, poverty-stricken north.

"I never thought I could see them again," she said after crossing the world's most fortified frontier to visit her kin. "I can die after visiting the North with no regrets."

Lee was one of just 97 South Koreans, almost all elderly, taking part in a rare reunion at the northern resort of Kumgangsan – or Diamond Mountain. Like the others, she had no phone or postal contact with her family for more than half a century. For years, she didn't even know if her brother and sisters were alive.

The old men and women visiting the North yesterday represented just a tiny fraction of the 80,000 South Koreans who say they believe they still have close relatives living in the north, 57 years after the war that divided the peninsula.

The two Koreas began such reunions back in 2000. But they were suspended two years ago amid heightening tension between the North and much of the rest of the world. Their resumption was yesterday seen as another sign that North Korea is reaching out to the West again.

As experts tried to analyse the events, reunited Koreans simply clutched each other, often unable to express their feelings in words.

Kim Yu-jum, now aged 100, was separated from her 16-year-old daughter in the chaos of war and they ended up on opposite sides of the front line. "For the past half-century I've never forgotten her. Every day I thought of her," she said.

Another South Korean, 95-year-old Chung Dae-chun, saw his family for the first time in more than half a lifetime. "Don't you have anything to say to me?" he said to his son, who is hearing impaired and appeared older than his trim and alert father.

Kim Ki-sung, an 82-year-old South Korean, met his son and daughter whom he left behind in North Korea in 1951 when American-led UN troops retreated during the Korean War.

"I am sorry for not taking you when I fled," Kim told his children. His son, Kim Jung-hyun, brought five medals he received from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, local media reported. His sister said he received the medals "because he worked hard since he grew up without a father".

Most North Koreans have spent the past 56 years knowing little or nothing about the outside world. Only a tiny elite has been able to travel; and those usually only to communist China or some of the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. No foreign journalists were invited to the reunions.

Some of those who were reunited yesterday had been parted more recently than the war. Also meeting again were some whose relatives had been seized by northern forces during the more than half a century of tense ceasefire (the Koreas have never signed a peace treaty).

"Don't cry," said Yoon Jung-hwa to her sister-in-law who was meeting her brother, whose fishing boat was seized 22 years ago off the west coast. "What's there to cry about when we are all doing well like this?"

The North denies holding anyone against their will and refuses to acknowledge the plight of the more than 1,000 civilians and prisoners of war believed to be held there. But some were allowed to take part in the reunions.

A total of 240 North Korean sons and daughters, brothers and sisters came to meet their southern relatives in Kumgangsan, a strange but scenic beach resort on North Korea's east coast that in the past has been open to foreigners.

There have been 16 rounds of family reunions involving about 16,000 people from South and North Korea since a landmark summit between the rival leaders in 2000 led to a rapid warming of ties.

Closed-circuit television links have also been set up for video reunions.

The concept behind the reunions was a show of goodwill on both sides but they have often been held hostage to the whims of North Korea, which has suspended them in fits of anger and to increase pressure on Seoul to bend to its demands.

A total of 127,000 people in the South reported in 1988 that they believed missing family members were in the North. Around 40,000 of those South Koreans have since died, with most of them never taking part in reunions, the South Korean government said.

A second group of reunions – overseen by the Red Cross – will begin on Tuesday. It is unclear when they may be held again. The North Koreans have balked at fulfilling southern requests for information on surviving relatives.

Yesterday's emotional scenes came amid growing international pressure on North Korea's communist government to return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks.

North Korea quit the six-nation negotiations in April to protest world criticism of a rocket launch. But Kim Jong Il recently reportedly expressed a willingness to hold "bilateral and multilateral talks", indicating that the North could rejoin the nuclear negotiations, which involve the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia.

US President Barack Obama told a UN General Assembly session in New York last week that North Korea "must be held accountable" if it continues to put its pursuit of nuclear weapons ahead of international security.

Koreans very rarely cross the so-called demilitarised zone or DMZ, a heavily patrolled 4km (2.5 mile) buffer area running the width of the entire peninsula. Set up when Korea was finally divided in 1953, the DMZ is lined with miles of razor-wire fences and minefields and guarded, on both sides, by thousands of troops.