Koreans haunted by lifetimes of separations
SEOUL – Three days. That’s how long Roh Hee Kwan thought he would be gone.
During the early months of the Korean War in 1951, the 20-year-old’s unit of student soldiers was ordered to move south from the border city Kaesong.
“The military said it was a strategic retreat,” said Roh, now 87, trim and with a full head of white hair. “They told us to just pack food for three days.”
Instead, it was the last time he saw his mother and two younger brothers. When he tried to make it back to Kaesong, the city had fallen to North Korea and he had lost track of his family.
That was 67 years ago. “I never had a chance to say goodbye,” said Roh, who lives in Seoul.
The Korean War that has divided this peninsula since 1953 also separated millions of people. As North and South Korea prepare to march together under the same flag Friday in the Winter Olympics, some hope there may be a chance for families to reunite.
Time is not on the side of these separated families. More than 60% of those
on a Red Cross list for a program to participate in family reunions are older than
80. More than half of the 130,000 who initially signed up have died. And 3,500 to 3,800 on the list die every year — about
10 people a day.
Roh is one of 59,000 South Koreans registered with the Red Cross in the reunion program with the North. The rival Koreas have held only 20 such events since 2000.
The last one was in October 2015. On each occasion, groups of 100 people from each side were allowed to spend three days together in mostly supervised conditions.
“The urgency for the reunions grows as people are getting older and older,” said Jang Jae Eun, deputy head of Inter-Korean cooperation at the Korean Red Cross.
Jang said the Korean Red Cross is pushing for more frequent reunions, with a greater number of participants each time. “We can’t give everybody opportunities if we have only 100 at a time, because we have so many old people,” she said.
But the reunion program is subject to the political relationship between the two countries, a relationship strained under North Korea’s belligerent tone, nuclear tests and long-range missile launches.
The Olympics have marked the first thaw in more than two years. Formal communications reopened in January when delegations from both countries held talks in the border village of Panmunjom to discuss plans for the North’s participation in the Games.
South Korea raised the question during last month’s talks, but Pyongyang said it wouldn’t consider reunions until Seoul returned a group of North Korean waitresses who defected in 2016.
Jang sees some optimism that the reunion program will be revived as communications stay open.
“We’re hoping that the conversation about the Olympics would trigger the conversation or meetings about the separated-family program again,” she said. “We’re hoping for that momentum to keep going.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has stressed a policy of greater engagement toward North Korea and has frequently mentioned family reunions as a humanitarian priority.
“The average age of the ... surviving family reunion applicants is 81,” Moon said in a speech in Germany in July. “They must be reunited when they are alive. This is an urgent humanitarian issue over any political considerations.”
For Lee Jin Ae, 85, the separation was going to be only five days.
As a headstrong girl who had just graduated from sixth grade in 1947, she wanted to join a group of families from her home village of Pyeongsan, North Korea, on a trip down to Seoul.
The Japanese occupation of Korea ended in 1945, and the country had been partitioned at the 38th parallel. Some were already fleeing communism in the North to the South.
Lee just wanted to see Seoul. A schoolyard song her classmates sang about Seoul made it sound like a wondrous place — filled with things to buy and monkeys in the zoo.
“I was young and naïve,” she said. “One night I snuck out, yelling to my father that I was going to Seoul and would be back in five days.”
It was the last time she would see him. The trip to South Korea was more difficult than she expected. Her mother followed her down to bring her home, but once they were in the South, the family decided it would be better for them to stay.
Her younger sister, Jin Suk, joined them afterward. As war broke out, her father, an older sister and two younger brothers were not able to make the trip.
“I always felt a special connection with my father,” she said. “He always would ride me to school on the back of his bicycle. It’s a warm memory.” She is also on the Red Cross reunion list.
Lee and her sister know their lives in South Korea were much better than they could have expected in the North. Both are proud of their families, which include multiple great-grandchildren. But for many who have been separated, something is missing.
“I regret that I haven’t had a chance to tell my father about his daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” she said. “He would have been very happy and proud.”
Roh, too, has had a full life and a family. Yet he still dreams of his hometown and wonders why this life-long separation had to happen.
Given a chance to meet his long-lost family, he’s not sure what he would tell them first.
“There’s just too much to say,” Roh said. “It’s been too long. Where do you start?”