Emotional farewells as North and South Koreans part for last time
SEOUL (AFP) – Clinging to each other for every last second, elderly North and South Korean family members allowed to meet for the first time in nearly seven decades bid tearful farewells Wednesday, probably forever.
Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War, which left the peninsula split by the impenetrable Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and separated brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives.
Over the years most have died, and fewer than 60,000 South Koreans remain alive who have registered to meet their Northern kin at the occasional cross-border reunions – this week’s are the first in three years.
Those survivors lucky enough to be chosen to take part – 89 families this time, with a similar number to follow later this week – must cram a lifetime’s relationship into just three days.
When they come to an end, the realities of age and the nuclear-armed North’s isolation mean they are unlikely ever to see each other again.
The relatives burst into tears when a loudspeaker announcement in a banqueting hall at the North’s scenic Mount Kumgang resort declared: “The reunion is over.”
One of the oldest people taking part, 99year-old Southerner Han Shin-ja, was ushered towards the door but refused to take a step further, hugging her two Northern daughters and crying.
“Mother! Mother!” wept her children, both of them in their seventies.
Han was the last Southerner to leave the room, where North Koreans remained scattered, dazed and in tears, with waitresses also crying as they removed the used plates.
Southerner Lee Ki-soon, 91, held his Northern son tightly in his arms, smiling broadly and telling him: “I’m not fake. You have a father.”