Long-separated families reunited in North Korea
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — The 92-year-old South Korean woman wept and stroked the wrinkled cheeks of her 71-year-old North Korean son Monday, their first meeting since they were driven apart during the turmoil of the 1950-53 Korean War.
“How many children do you have? Do you have a son?” Lee Keum-seom asked her son Ri Sang Chol during their long-awaited encounter at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort.
The emotional reunion came after dozens of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea to meet temporarily with their relatives. The weeklong event, the first of its kind in nearly three years, was arranged as the rival Koreas boost reconciliation efforts amid a diplomatic push to resolve a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Hugging the woman he’d last seen when he was 4, Ri showed his mother a photo of her late husband, who had stayed behind in North Korea with him after being separated from his wife while fleeing south. “Mother, this is how my father looked,” Ri said.
Before leaving for North Korea, Lee said she wanted to ask her son “how he grew up without his mom and how his father raised him.”
Most of the participants in the reunions are in their 70s or older and are eager to see their loved ones once more before they die. Most have had no word on whether their relatives are still alive because they are not allowed to visit each other across the border or even exchange let- ters, phone calls or email.
About 90 elderly South her 88-year-old brother from Koreans, accompanied by South Korea resembled each their family members, will other a great deal. “Brother, have three days of meetings it would be really good if with their North Korean relKorean unification comes. atives before returning to Let’s live together even at the South on Wednesday. A least one minute after uniseparate round of reunions fication before we die,” the from Friday to Sunday will woman said tearfully. involve more than 300 other Before this week’s South Koreans, according to reunions, nearly 20,000 Seoul’s Unification Ministry. people had participated
During Monday’s meet- in 20 rounds of face-toing, many elderly Koreans face reunions since 2000. held each other’s hands and Another 3,700 exchanged wiped away tears with handvideo messages with their kerchiefs while asking how North Korean relatives. None their relatives had lived. They have had a second chance showed photos of family to see or talk with their relmembers who couldn’t come atives. to their meetings. South Korea sees the sep
Han Shin-ja, a 99-year-old arated families as the largSouth Korean woman, was est humanitarian issue creat a loss for words after she ated by the war, which killed reunited with her two North and injured millions and Korean daughters, both in cemented the division of their early 70s. Not knowthe Korean Peninsula into ing their separation would the North and South. The be permanent, she left them Unification Ministry estibehind in the North during mates there are currently the war while fleeing south about 600,000 to 700,000 with her third and young- South Koreans with immeest daughter. diate or extended relatives
She could only say “Ah” in North Korea. More than and “When I fled ...” before 75,000 of the 132,000 South choking up with tears. Koreans who have applied
Kim Sun Ok, an 81-year- to participate in reunions old North Korean woman, have died, according to a said she found that she and ministry record.