Elderly Koreans shut out of family reunions use backchannels
SEOUL: Kim Kyung-jae will probably never be chosen in the government lottery that would allow him to reunite one last time with his relatives in North Korea. But that’s no problem, he said, even as a small group of the lucky South Koreans who won the lottery met with their loved ones in North Korea.
The 86-year-old Kim is one of a dwindling number of elderly South Koreans who, frustrated with North Korea’s reluctance to allow more frequent reunions and by the small chance that they’ll be selected before they die, found unofficial networks to communicate with their North Korean relatives. For three decades Kim has been sending his North Korean sister letters and aid.
“It’s absolutely regrettable that other South Koreans don’t know about these communication channels,” Kim said, showing a bunch of let- ters with North Korean stamps that his sister has sent to him over the years.
During this week’s reunions, which end Sunday and are organized by the rival governments, hundreds of Koreans, many in their 70s or older, have been reunited for the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War. But they are just a tiny fraction of the separated families in the Koreas, where millions were split during the turmoil of the war. This is the 21st time the Koreas have had such reunions, but they don’t occur regularly because of long periods of bad feelings between the rivals, and Pyongyang’s reluctance to expose its people to the outside world.
So Kim and others turn to friends, brokers and others in China, Japan and elsewhere to try to find out if their relatives in the North are still alive and to arrange exchanges of letters, photos, phone calls and sometimes face-to-face meetings.