Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Korean families await reunions with longing and trepidation
SOKCHO, South Korea — Kim Kwang-ho was just 14 years old when his family was ripped in two during the Korean War. It was December 1950, and Chinese troops were advancing on his small hometown. With his father, two older brothers and an older sister, he fled south.
His mother stayed behind with his 10-year-old brother and several cousins, expecting to join them later when the fighting was over, the journey safer.
“It was a pretty lighthearted farewell,” he said. “We thought we were only going to be apart for three days or a week.”
It was to be the last time he ever saw or even heard from his mother, who, he has just found out, died in Communist North Korea in 1967. On Monday, more than 67 years after they parted, he finally gets to see his younger brother again.
Kim is one of 172 South Koreans who will travel into North Korea to meet relatives this week, in the first reunion of divided families to take place for three years, as relations thaw between the neighbors.
These reunions are simultaneously a reminder of the deep bonds between the two nations, and an illustration of just how far they have grown apart in the decades since their painful division.
The reunion program began in 1985, stalled, then got underway properly at the turn of the millennium. In all, more than 17,000 South Koreans have taken part in more than 20 meetings, seeing their relatives in person or over video link. But more than 130,000 have registered as members of divided families since the program began, and more than half of them died before getting to see their relatives again. Many on the waiting list are over 90 years old.
Kim has vivid memories of life in North Korea: of climbing an apricot tree outside his house and sitting up there singing; of running up into the hills when he heard the planes of the U.S.-led United Nations force flying toward his rural town, and watching their bombs exploding in a line along the railway tracks.
But he can’t remember his brother’s face, or even his mother’s anymore.
Still, he says he was happy to be chosen for the reunion and is looking forward to seeing his brother again.
He will come bearing gifts: some warm jackets, socks, soap and cosmetics for his brother’s wife, and two packets of Choco Pies, the cake-and-marshmallow chocolate sandwich snack made in South Korea but particularly coveted in the North.
Participants are discouraged from bringing cash, and he has chosen not to, worried that his brother probably wouldn’t get to keep it anyway.
On Sunday, the South Koreans gathered for a briefing on how to behave and what they can and cannot say, before traveling by bus across the border to North Korea.
Kim will have to stay in a different hotel than his brother, but they will be brought together for group reunions, dinner banquets and lunches, including a three-hour individual meeting.
Southern participants are advised not to criticize the North Korean leadership or ask about the country’s economic situation in case it causes problems for their relatives. And if their counterparts start singing propaganda songs or making political statements — a common problem in the past — participants are advised to “naturally lead the conversation to another topic.”
Still, Kim is looking forward to hearing about his mother, and about how his hometown has changed. Then, on Wednesday, after just 11 hours together, he and his brother will part again, almost certainly for the last time.
The meetings are like a sudden spark of light after nearly seven decades of darkness. Many people have heard nothing about their relatives in the North during that entire time, and are nervous about who and what they will encounter.
“I really wish we could exchange letters afterwards, or talk to each other the phone, or by video call,” Kim said, “but these reunions are one-time-only meetings.”