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A Tearful Reunion of Divided Korean Families

28/09/09September 28, 2009

Hundreds of divided families from North and South Korea are meeting this week for the first time in almost 60 years. There haven’t been any family reunions since 2007, when the Pyongyang government called them off in protest against the conservative South Korean government. But now that they are back on, many South Koreans see this as a chance for the two nations to mend fences. But some of those who have partaken in past reunions are not getting their hopes up.

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Sisters meeting each other after decades
Sisters meeting each other after decadesImage: AP

Since the two Koreas announced last month that reunions would resume, there’s been renewed hope for many divided families in the region.

But with most of the lost loved ones in their 70s and 80s, these tens of thousands of split families fear they will never have the chance to be reunited.

Seok Tae Soon is one of the lucky ones. He has travelled to North Korea’s Mount Geumgang resort where the reunions are taking place. The 74-year-old will finally be able to see his older brother whom he last saw during the Korean War in 1950. Seok says for years he thought his brother was dead.

A silent meeting

Seok says he would like to ask his brother why, after he was captured by the North Koreans in the war, he was not a part of the prisoner exchange. But he doubts he will be able to say that to him.

Seok knows there will be many things he can’t talk to his brother about. The 200 South Korean families had to attend a lecture on the subjects they cannot discuss with relatives, for instance politics, history and North Korea’s famine.

Seok says that despite these rules it’s worth it. He says that he doesn’t want to get into the politics of it all, but he does hope that by having these reunions more often inter-Korean relations will be improved and will lead to peace.

Seok is probably not the only one with optimistic expectations.

Emotions high

Media coverage during family reunions is set to maximum emotional capacity. Images of lost relatives embracing after so many years apart strike a chord with many South Koreans - even those who don’t have any family up north.

Those who are most sceptical of the reunions are the South Koreans who have already been there.

Cho Moon Sun, who is in his mid-80s, was reunited with his daughter in 2006. He hadn’t seen her since she was a baby. But he was only given a few hours to speak with her in private.

"She didn’t seem like a human", Cho says. "I could recognise that she had been trained by the North Korean government on what to say. She just looked me up and down and looked at my name tag. I was so happy, but she seemed uninterested. I don’t think the new reunions will go very well because of North Korea’s control over these people."

Hope for another reunion

But Seok Tae Soon, who is attending this latest round, wants to see his brother anyway.

“I really hope I could stay in contact with my brother after the reunion finishes, but I know that no one has ever been able to do that, because of the political situation.”

He realises that this is probably the last chance they’ll ever get to speak to each other because they are both elderly and there is little chance of the political situation changing in their lifetimes.

Author:Jason Strother (Seoul)
Editor: Anne Thomas