Tears as kin reunite 70 years on

KOREAS: FAMILIES TORN APART BY WAR

Mother of 99 sees her daughters, 69 and 72, for first time in decades.

Sokcho

With tears and cries, dozens of elderly and frail South and North Korean family members met yesterday for the first time since the peninsula and their relationships were torn apart by war nearly 70 years ago.

Clasping one another, they tried to bridge the decades of separation through precious physical contact and by showing each other pictures of their relatives.

Many of the North Korean women were clad in traditional dresses, and all had the ubiquitous badges of the North’s founder Kim Il Sung or his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, while the Southerners wore their best suits.

As soon as 99-year-old South Korean Han Shin-ja approached their table, her two daughters – aged 69 and 72 – bowed their heads deeply towards her and burst into tears.

Han also broke down, rubbing her cheeks against theirs.

“When I fled during the war...” she began, choking back tears as if she were about to apologise for leaving them behind.

Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War,