Farewells of a lifetime

Second group of 337 ROK citizens will meet DPRK relatives on Friday

Ko Jung-hi, 77, (left) and Ri Kyong-sun, 53, of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, wave to Republic of Korea relatives on Wednesday after a rare reunion.

SEOUL — Hundreds of elderly Koreans tearfully said their final goodbyes on Wednesday at the end of the first round of rare reunions between relatives separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

About 200 citizens from the Republic of Korea and their family members returned to their country later on Wednesday after the end of three days of meetings with separated relatives at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort. Another 337 ROK citizens will participate in a second round of reunions from Friday to Sunday.

The first set of reunions created heart-wrenching images of relatives weeping, embracing and caressing each other in a rush of emotions in what’s likely to be the last time they’ll see each other before they die. Many of the ROK participants were war refugees who reunited with the siblings or infant children they left behind, many of whom are now in their seventies.

At their final lunch meeting on Wednesday before the ROK participants were to return home, 91-year-old Lee Ki-soon seemed lost for words as he quietly drank a glass of soju with his 75-year-old son who lives in the DPRK.

Nearby, Ri Chol, a 61-yearold DPRK citizen, quietly wept as he grasped the hands of a 93-year-old grandmother he was only just getting to know.

“Don’t cry, Chol,” Kwon Seok, also in tears, told her grandson.

An Jong-sun, a 70-year-old DPRK participant, carefully fed her 100-year-old father food. Han Shin-ja, 99, told her two daughters in the DPRK to eat a lot of chap-ssal, or sticky rice, for health. The daughters cried as Han told them she would always pray for their happiness and also for the future of her great-grandchildren she never got to see.

No second chance

Some exchanged their phone numbers and home addresses, although the two countries since the end of the war have banned ordinary citizens from visiting relatives on the other side of the border or contacting them without permission.

Shin Jae-cheon, a 92-yearold from the ROK town of Gimpo, not far from the border, lamented that his 70-year-old sister in the DPRK lived about an hour’s drive away all these years.

“It will take 40 minutes for me to drive there,” Shin told his sister, Sin Kum-sun, who lives in the DPRK border town of Kaesong. “The bus that goes to my home is No 8. No 8. The No 8 bus,” Shin added, expressing a wish for his sister to come visit one day.

Nearly 20,000 people have participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions held between the countries since 2000. No one has had a second chance to see their relatives.

Millions of people were swept apart by the Korean War, which left the peninsula split by the Demilitarized Zone and separated brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives.

Over the years most have died, and fewer than 60,000 people remain alive in the ROK who have registered to meet their kin in the DPRK.

The latest reunions come after a three-year hiatus during which Pyongyang conducted three nuclear tests and multiple missile launches.

The DPRK’s top leader Kim Jong-un shifted toward diplomacy in 2018 and has met ROK President Moon Jae-in twice and also held a summit with US President Donald Trump.

Trump said on Monday that he would “most likely” meet with the Kim for a second time.