Korean families temporarily reunited
Dozens see elderly kin for first time since war
SEOUL, South Korea — The 92-year-old South Korean woman wept and stroked the wrinkled cheeks of her 71-year-old North Korean son on Monday, their first meeting since they were driven apart during the turmoil of the 195053 Korean War.
“How many children do you have? Do you have a son?” Lee Keumseom 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.
About 90 elderly South Koreans, accompanied by their family members, will have three days of meetings with their North Korean relatives before returning to the South on Wednesday. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.
Before this week’s reunions, nearly 20,000 people had participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000.
Another 3,700 exchanged video messages with their North Korean relatives. None have had a second chance to see or talk with their relatives.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday reiterated that time is running out to expand the reunion program, saying it would be a “shameful thing” for both Koreas to see many elderly people dying without even finding out whether their loved ones are still alive.
While South Korea uses a computerized lottery to pick participants for the reunions, North Korea is believed to choose based on loyalty to its authoritarian leadership.