Raw emotions as Koreas wrap up family reunion
Print Edition
NORTH and South Korean families divided since the Korean War said a tearful final farewell yesterday, wrapping up a rare reunion that was clouded at the last by a maritime border spat.
After three emotionally fraught days seeking to redress more than 60 years of separation, the reunion ended on the most traumatic note of all — a goodbye that for most of the elderly participants marked the last time they will ever see each other.
For some it was simply too overwhelming, and Han Um Jon’s last sight of her 86-year-old South Korean husband was on a stretcher as he was placed into an ambulance to take him back to Seoul.
Others clung desperately to the hands of their South Korean relatives through the windows of buses preparing to leave the North Korean mountain resort where the gathering had been held.
“Father, please live until the age of 130. I’ll live till the age of 100,” said Lee Dong Wook, the son of the eldest South Korean participant — Lee Suk-ju, 98.
“We will find a way to meet again,” a woman on the bus shouted to her elderly North Korea relative outside. “Just don’t fall sick. Okay?”
Around 1,000 relatives from both sides took part in the week-long event — a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands wait-listed for a reunion slot.
Divided into two rounds, it was only the second gathering in five years for those torn apart by the 1950-53 Korean conflict. The two Koreas had agreed to the reunion as part of a deal brokered in August to ease tensions that had pushed them to the brink of armed conflict.
The latest reunion, meanwhile, ended with no commitment as to when the next one might be held.
Given that there are more than 65,000 South Koreans currently on the waiting list for a reunion spot, those selected represent a very fortunate minority.
But yesterday’s scenes of relatives clinging to each other and weeping at their final breakfast meeting underlined the emotional cost that gatherings exact.
The “three-day” tag attached to each reunion round is misleading. In reality, that boils down to just six, two-hour sessions — only one of which allows the separated relatives to meet in private.
Among those reunited over the last three days was Lee Bok-soon, 88, and the son she had not seen since he was abducted by North Korea in 1972 while on a fishing boat in the Yellow Sea.
“I am alive and have lived a good life,” her son, 64-year-old Jung Gun Mok told Lee during one of their meetings.
North Korea has rejected repeated requests from South Korea to make the reunions longer and more frequent.
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