North and South Korean family members reunite after 65 years

[kyokomurasaki.livejournal.com]

Oh In-se, 83, and his wife Lee Sun-kyu, 85, at the divided family reunion event at Mt. Keumgang in North Korea, Oct. 20. The two were married at age 19 then separated shortly after. In the middle is their son, who was just a newborn when Oh left. (by Shin So-young, staff photographer)

Members of divided families have tearful encounter on first day of three day reunion event in Mt. Keumgang

The bridegroom’s face showed all the marks of the 65 years that had passed. The hair of the bride, a pretty 19-year-old when she left alone for the South, was now frosted with gray. The son that had been in her belly seven months into their marriage had passed his sixtieth birthday without ever having seen his father’s face.

“Come sit next to me,” whispered Oh In-se, 83, to his wife Lee Sun-kyu, 85. It was as if he was calling forth an old memory.

Meeting again like this after 65 years? It’s all right, I guess. Once I start talking about how much I missed her, there’d be no end to it.”
Dressed in a reddish-brown traditional Korean hanbok outfit, Lee was shy. Oh expressed his apologies to his wife.

“It was the war,” he stammered. “I mean, I…I had no idea how hard it was going to be.”

Oh seemed to have trouble finishing his sentence, perhaps out of guilt for having started a new family in the North. Lee, who had been smiling quietly and talking about how “happy and giddy” she was when she left Sokcho, Gangwon Province, on the morning of Oct. 20, now said that she was “not even crying,” even as she wiped the corners of her eyes.

It was around 3 pm, and the reunion center for separated family members at Mt. Keumgang in North Korea was awash in tears and cries. Every one of the 96 relatives who had crossed the armistice line from the South had their own sad story to tell.

‘Come sit next to me’: Couple reunites after 65 years

For son Oh Jang-gyun, 65, it had been a lifelong dream. Over and over, he had repeated the word in his mind -- “father.” When they finally met, he prostrated himself in a deep bow.

As soon as they saw each other, Oh In-se clutched his son in a deep embrace.

“I have tried all my life to live as a son with a father,” the younger Oh wept.

The two puts their hands side by side and looked at each other’s faces. “We do look alike,” they said tearfully.

Oh Jang-gyun was born five months after his father went missing, departing from the village of Gadeok in Cheongwon County, North Chungcheong Province. He had been married for just over six months.

“You got ten days of training, and that was it,” he explained.

His last memory of his pregnant wife was her waving and saying, “Have a good trip.” Left alone, she had to be tough in raising her son, traveling the country to do farm work during the day and odd sewing work at night.

Lee Ok-yeon, 87, was dressed in a hanbok outfit with a light pink jacket and purple skirt. She turned her head and saw the husband she had been waiting for so long -- now approaching ninety. The husband, 88-year-old Chae Hun-sik, wordlessly wept as he clutched his son so tightly it seemed his hat might fall off.

“Father, it’s your son,” said Chae Hee-yang, 66, through his sobs.

Lee was hesitant to take her husband’s hand when he reached it out.

“I’m so old now,” she said. “What am I going to do with it?”

It was in August 1950 that Chae said he was “going away for a bit.” She hadn’t heard from him since. Left behind, his wife and son spent their lives in the village in North Gyeongsang Province, awaiting his return some day. Now the father was incredulously stroking the face of the son who had been just a newborn when he went away.

“Your mother . . . without me there . . . please try to understand,” he wept. “I was alone for ten years, and I didn’t know if reunification would ever happen. . . .”

It was his apology for remarrying. Sadness mixed with joy, joy with sadness.


Siblings Kim Bok-rak (80, from South Korea) and Kim Jeom-soon (83, from North Korea) cry as they clasp hands at the family reunions at Mt. Keumgang in North Korea, Oct. 20. (by Shin So-young, staff photographer)

Embracing and touching

Three hundred eighty-nine people from 96 families in the South Korean delegation arrived at Mt. Keumgang Hotel at around one p.m. that day. At 2:50 pm, they went to wait at the center for the group reunions. Around ten minutes had passed silently, in a mixture of tension and anticipation, when the strains of the North Korean song “Bangapseumnida (Glad to See You)” began to sound. All eyes turned toward the entrance to see the 141 members of North Korea‘s 96-family delegation walk in.

“Is it me?”

“No.”

“You came!”

“You saw me right away.”

“You’re alive! You’re alive!”

“You came! You’re here!”

“You must be my father. My father!”

Tears began to pour as brief exclamations and deep sighs echoed all around. The reunited family members embraced and stroked one another tenderly.

The conclusion of the two-hour group reunions was slow and painful. Even though family members knew they would meet several more times before departing Mt. Keumkang on Oct. 22, they clung to each other’s hands as if they were saying goodbye forever. Their old longing and guilt were that strong.

The family members met again at 7 o’clock that evening. This was the welcome dinner that South Korea had prepared at the meeting center. Smiles were evident amid the tears. The long years apart were bridged by this short meeting. The two hours of dinner seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. As the people went back to their accommodations, weight and weariness could be seen in their steps.
　
Some went to North Korea by ambulance

On Tuesday morning at 8:37, the group of divided families from South Korea had boarded 16 buses and headed up the East Sea Line Road toward Mt. Keumkang. An ambulance crossed the armistice line, too.

Kim Sun-tak, 77, the South Korean younger sister of North Korean Kim Hyeonghwan, 83, was in an ambulance, hooked up to a ventilator because her asthma had gotten worse.

Yeom Jin-rye, 83, who was excited about meeting her older brother Yeom Jin-bong, 84, was also transported in an ambulance because of pain from a slipped disc.

Kwon Oh-hui, 97, hoping to meet his stepson Ri Han-sik, 80, and Kim Nam-gyu, 96, hoping to meet his younger sister Kim Nam-dong, 83, were some of the oldest family members in the group, but they also made it to North Korea with no issues.

During the border control procedures that took about an hour at North Korea’s CIQ (Customs, Immigration, and Quarantine), North Korean officials examined all of the laptop computers brought by South Korean reporters. During the 19th session of reunions that took place in Feb. 2014, North Korea took issue with a word document saved on the laptop of a South Korean reporter and refused to allow that reporter to cross the border.

By Kim Jin-chul, staff reporter
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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- Smiles and laughter amid sadness at divided family reunions


Rim Ok-rye (right) greets her niece, at the divided family reunion event in Mt. Keumgang, North Korea, Oct. 21. (by Shin So-young, staff photographer)

Though happy to see each other again, divided families dread having to say goodbye again

It was a night that seemed more dream than reality. For the participants, the prospect of another long goodbye must have seemed chilling. Now it was day two of the twentieth inter-Korean divided family reunions on the morning of Oct. 21, and sadness still lingered all around the Mt. Keumgang Hotel as South and North Korean family members enjoyed a lunch together after their reunions. But the smiles and laughter continued too.
　
Brothers share beer after 65 years

“What are you doing struggling like this? You ought to be having it easy. . . .”
Kim Ju-cheol, 83, had not even picked up his spoon. His 85-year-old North Korean brother Ju-song lifted his napkin instead of his chopsticks.

“You need to stay healthy, Ju-cheol.”

It was a remark many years in coming. The brothers did nothing to wipe away the tears spilling from their eyes. They touched each other‘s faces, which showed a striking resemblance. They were already preparing to say goodbye. The two brothers toasted with glasses of North Korean Taedonggang beer. Smiles mixed with sadness.

It had been 1950, and Ju-cheol lay bedridden at their house in Yangpyeong, a village in the city of Cheongpyeong, Gangwon Province, after falling from a tree. Ju-song gave his little brother three apricots, glancing outside as he did it.

“I’m going now,” he told Ju-cheol. “Make sure to eat right.”

They were the last words they had shared. At one point, Ju-cheol assumed his brother was dead.

“Take care of your father,” he told Kim Song-hee, his North Korean brother’s 43-year-old daughter. “That way we might see each other again.”

Nam Chol-sun, 82, tightly held the hand of her South Korean sister Sun-ok, 80. She seemed unwilling to let go. Together, they shared old pictures, as if trying to bring the days when they were two loving sisters.

“It’s mom! That’s mom,” cried Sun-ok as she looked at a picture showing them taking their mother to see cherry blossoms. Her sister took out another black-and-white photo. “It’s our wedding picture,” she said.

The sisters’ home was in Daejeon, but when the Korean War broke out Chol-sun left to “go to school” and never came back. It was a happy family with four siblings, the youngest two of whom -- named Chun-ja and Wan-hyo -- emigrated to Brazil in 1985.

“There should have more of us here, but they suddenly called us and said it was too far away and they couldn’t go,” lamented Sun-ok.

Chol-sun went before a South Korean news network‘s cameras to send a video message telling her siblings, “I’d like to see your faces.”

“I’m doing well, and I hope we get to see each other when unification comes,” she added.

Brothers and sisters like the Kims and Nams represented 80 of the relatives gathered from 96 families at the event. Three of the reunions were between fathers and children, two between husband and wife. Twelve attendees were aunts or uncles or more distant relations. Already, a rapidly growing number of the first generation of divided family members are passing away.
　
Laughter and tears . . . ‘Rehearsing’ for another goodbye

It was 8:50 am local time (30 minutes behind South Korean time) on Oct. 21, and the hotel balcony was filled with faces gazing out in anticipation. They were the South Korean relatives awaiting the individual family reunions, which were scheduled to start at nine. The family members, who had been staying either at the Outer Keumgang Hotel or the Mt. Keumgang Hotel, now looked out anxiously at their North Korean relatives as they stepped off their bus. They had spent a long night waiting for the reunions, which had 96 separate rooms assigned for them. Reporters were not granted access to the meetings.

Later, after the conclusion of that day’s individual reunions and the preceding day‘s group reunions and welcome dinner, most of the relatives seemed at peace.
“I feel like we’ve grown closer after meeting again today. We’ve opened up more,” beamed Yang Yeong-rye, 67, after meeting his North Korean uncle, 83-year-old Ryang Man-ryong.

Another South Korean niece, 59-year-old Yang Ok-hee, said Ryang had “given each of his nephews and nieces a short written message.”

“Be kind to each other and live well. Visit each other often,” he had written.
Saying goodbye again after over six decades is not an easy matter.

“The individual reunions were just two hours long. It was really sad,” said 54-year-old Lee Min-hee, who had come from the South to see an uncle.

“It would be nice if we could just go out and take a picture in front of the maple trees or eat lunch. It’s so sad to have to part like this and wait until later to see each other,” Lee complained.

Lee‘s North Korean uncle Do Hung-gyu, 85, agreed.

“Make sure to come again, please,” he said. His repeated pleas left tears in Lee’s eyes.

After the individual reunions, the relatives had lunch together at noon before going on to their final group reunion at four. They seemed to be readying themselves for their last goodbyes at the farewell meeting on Oct. 22.
Ri Hong-jong, 88, sang the song “Aesu-ui Soyagok (Sorrowful Serenade)” to his visiting South Korean daughter Lee Jeong-suk, 68.

“I won’t be able to remember your voice when I go back. Sing a song for me,” she had said. Now she listened, a smile on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks.

By Kim Jin-chul, staff reporter at Mt. Keumgang, North Korea
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
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- North Korean families reunited with relatives from South after six decades


Lee Soon-kyu, 85, is reunited with her 83-year-old husband, Oh In-se. Photograph: Yonhap/EPA

It took just a short bus ride across a border separating two countries with a common history, culture and language. But for the hundreds of South Korean and North Korean families reunited for the first time in more than 60 years, Tuesday was a bitter reminder of an almost-forgotten war that will keep them living apart for the rest of their lives.

The first of several days of inter-Korean reunions began with the arrival of busloads of elderly South Koreans at the North Korean resort of Mount Kumgang. Waiting on the other side of the heavily fortified border were 140 of their North Korean relatives.

For many, this was the first contact they had made with relatives since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war. The conflict ended in an armistice, but not a peace agreement, and consigned North and South to dramatically different paths: prosperity and democracy in the South; poverty and oppression under the Kim dynasty in the North.

Almost 400 South Koreans, chosen by computerised lottery from among 65,000 on the waiting list, boarded the buses carrying thermal underwear, medicine, winter coats and cash to give their relatives from the North, who were reportedly chosen for their loyalty to the North Korean leadership.

Among those taking part in the first family reunions since February last year – and only the second in the last five years – was Lee Ok-yeon, an 88-year-old South Korean who was to be reunited with her husband for the first time in 65 years.

Lee lives in the same house in the South that her husband, also 88, built and that the couple shared as newlyweds, before they were separated by the civil war. Her grandson, Chae Jeong-jae, told South Korean reporters that Lee had “asked whether it was a dream or a reality” when she was told she would attend the reunions.


Family members talk at the Mount Kumgang resort on the North’s south-eastern coast Photograph: Yonhap/AFP/Getty Images

Lee Dong-im, 94, who was to be reunited with her brother-in-law, said before the reunions that she was “choked with tears”.

In a second round of meetings from Saturday until Monday, 250 South Koreans and about 190 North Korean relatives will be reunited at the same resort, the unification ministry in Seoul said.

The reunions are a rare chance for relatives to meet, under the watchful eye of officials from both sides. Citizens of both countries are ordinarily banned from travelling across the border for family visits, and they are not permitted to make phone calls or exchange emails.

“I couldn’t sleep at all last night,” 82-year-old Lee Joo-kuk said as he waited to cross the border from the South, sporting a tag with his name, age and the name of the elder brother he would be meeting in Mount Kumgang.

“Our family was sure he was dead. We even held memorial rituals for him every year. But then I got the news that he was alive and wanted to see us. It’s like he’s been resurrected.”

Most of the displaced on both sides died without ever being reunited with their relatives. Many of those who survived are in their 80s and 90s, and accept that this will be their last chance to see loved ones in the North.


North Korean Chae Hoon-shik meets with his South Korean son, Chae Hee-Yang. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

Two ambulances escorted the South Koreans, many of whom are in poor health. More than 20 people required wheelchairs and one woman required medical treatment and oxygen before boarding her bus. Four others decided not to make the trip, saying they were too ill to travel.

Kim Ok-Ja, a 72-year-old South Korean woman who was unable to speak, was going to meet her elder brother, who had been forcibly recruited into the advancing North Korean army in 1951. “We just assumed he was dead,” said Kim’s husband, who was accompanying her.

“Realistically, we know this is the only and last chance we have for a meeting. But his parents are buried in his home town, so we hope that in the future either he or his children will be able to visit there.”

Kim and her companions will be given just hours to catch up with their relatives and hand over gifts. Over the next three days, they will sit down with their North Korean relatives during six two-hour sessions – just 12 hours to cover more than six decades of separation.

The reunions were started as part of warmer ties that followed their first bilateral summit between their leaders in 2000, although inter-Korean relations have deteriorated since then. An estimated 18,800 Koreans have since participated in 19 face-to-face reunions and about 3,750 others have been reunited by video.

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- Divided Koreans prepare to meet after lifetime of separation


One of the lucky South Koreans selected to take part in a rare family reunion to be held in North Korea this week shows a family photograph. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Kim Myeong-do remembers his mother’s last words to this day.

“Take care, study hard and come back,” she said as his ferry pulled out of the harbour and set a course for the South Korean port of Incheon.

Kim, then a 21-year-old schoolteacher from North Korea’s South Hwanghae province, was heading south to pursue his dream of a university education. “I was afraid that I was going to be a primary school teacher forever,” he recalled.

He was successful, and secured a place to study Korean literature in Seoul.

But Kim’s hopes of returning home were shattered just a few years later, in 1950, when war broke out and the Korean peninsula was carved in two.

“It’s tragic,” sighed the 93-year-old, who has lived in South Korea ever since. “If this isn’t a tragedy, I don’t know what is.”

Kim never saw his mother or his father again and for decades lived without knowing what had become of them.

Only in February last year, when he took part in a rare reunion for separated families, did he lay eyes again on his youngest brother, Kim Heung-do.

“Seeing him after such a long time felt like I was meeting a man from the neighbourhood,” Kim said at his home in Yongin, a city about 20 miles south of Seoul. “We wouldn’t have recognised each other if we had met on the street.”

This week about 100 divided families will get the same chance to attend a once-in-a-lifetime reunion with relatives they lost following the 1950-1953 Korean war.

The meeting, organised by the Red Cross, was agreed during peace talks between Pyongyang and Seoul in August and will start on Tuesday at Mount Kumgang, a resort in North Korea.


Kim Myeong-do holds his only family photograph. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

Lee Taek-koo, an 89-year-old who has been selected to take part, told Voice of America he was anxious to meet his youngest brother, one of seven siblings he lost when the peninsula was divided.

“It makes my heart flutter,” Lee, who is from Incheon, said. “It’s been a long time.”

The latest reunion will be the twentieth to take place since 2000, a tiny number considering there are an estimated 66,000 South Korean families who are still waiting for such a chance.

Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, says almost 130,000 people have applied to take part in family reunions over the years but about half of them have now died. The majority of those waiting for a reunion are in their 70s or 80s.

In the absence of regular reunions some take matters into their own hands, paying middlemen to arrange unofficial meetings in Chinese border towns near North Korea.

Others wait desperately for a chance to take part in the official meetings, only to have their hopes crushed by the algorithm-driven lottery that is used to whittle down the numbers.

The family reunions are as emotional and sensitive affairs as they are infrequent.

A government guidebook handed to South Korean participants ahead of this week’s event discouraged questions about politics or whether their North Korean relatives are eating well, according to Reuters.

The guidelines also warned anxious families against calming their nerves with potent North Korean liquor.

“[The families] meet, embrace one another and just wail because they are so happy to see each other,” Kim recalled of the last reunion in 2014.

“Then they exchange some news, go to sleep in the hotel, say goodbye and are separated again.”

Kim said he was grateful to have be allowed even the briefest of moments with his brother, who was just four when they were last together and is now an elderly man.

But their first encounter in nearly 70 years brought devastating, if anticipated news.

“I just heard news about my family in the North, that my parents had passed away, what my younger siblings are doing for a living and so on. Then we parted,” he said.

With no sign of the Koreas being unified, Kim said he had given up hope of seeing his brother again.

“I feel hopeless because the communists in the North want to have reunification their way and, of course, South Korea wants to have it its way,” he said.


The family photograph handed to Kim by his brother at last year’s reunion. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian

“Am I ever going to be able to see my family again now that I am old?” he wondered. “Even if they hold more family reunions, there are tens of thousands of people who still haven’t met their families. The ones who have already met their families won’t get another chance.”

Kim made the most of the university education for which he unwittingly sacrificed his family.

He built a successful career at a South Korean publishing company, married and now lives with his wife in a modest third-floor apartment in a leafy middle-class condominium.

As Kim reflects on his loss, two things bring him comfort.

The first is that his North Korean relatives, who have their own fruit orchard, appear to have escaped the worst of the suffering inflicted on the people of North Korea. “I’m happy for them,” he said.

The second is a colour photograph of his long-lost family, a small token of affection handed to him by his brother at last year’s reunion.

In the picture, 31 North Korean faces, young and old, stare into the camera, reaching out to a relative they will never know.

They are Kim’s in-laws, cousins, nephews and nieces, condemned by history to be eternal strangers. “I look at it all the time,” he said.
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- S. Koreans Return Home After Reunion, 2nd Session Participants to Depart Friday



South Korean families who took part in the first three-day session of inter-Korean family reunions have safety returned home.

Three-hundred-89 family members who left North Korea's Mount Geumgang resort earlier Thursday crossed the military demarcation line around 3:30 p.m. and returned to the South through the Inter-Korean Transit Office in Goseong, Gangwon Province.

Eighty-three-year-old Yeom Jin-rye was transported home by ambulance, but no major health concerns arose for the other elderly participants.

Before departure, South Korean families held their final farewell meetings with 141 North Korean relatives at the Mount Geumgang reunion center from 9:30 a.m. for about two hours.

South Korean family members held onto the hands of their relatives through bus windows, some crying loudly, as the North Koreans departed first.

Following the first three-day session, 255 South Korean participants will gather in Sokcho, Gangwon Province Friday for the second session of reunions with 188 of their North Korean kin.

The second session will follow the same protocol as the first session, lasting for three days.

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South Koreans chosen to take part in the reunions wave aboard a bus in the city of Sokcho, on South Korea’s east coast before they cross the inter-Korean border to reach a resort on Mount Kumgang
Photograph: Yonhap/EPA


An elderly South Korean man travels to the event. About 100 divided families have been given the chance to attend the once-in-a-lifetime meeting with relatives they lost following the 1950-1953 Korean war and the division of the Korean peninsula
Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images


A group of South Korean women sit on a bench outside their hotel before departing for the border. The meeting was organised by the Red Cross and agreed during peace talks between Pyongyang and Seoul in August
Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images


South Koreans wait to clear customs and a quarantine checkpoint before entering the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea
Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images


North Korean Oh In-se (centre) meets with his South Korean son Oh Jang-kyun (right) during the family reunion, after being separated for 60 years
Photograph: Pool/Getty Images


Oh Se In and his son celebrate during the meeting on Tuesday
Photograph: Kim Do-hoon/AP


Min Ho-sik (centre), 84, hugs his North Korean relative Min Eun-sik (right), 81. The reunion is the 20th to take place since 2000
Photograph: YONHAP/AFP/Getty Images


South Korean Chae Hui-yang (right), 66, meets with his North Korean father Chae Hun-Sik (left), 88, during the first day of the family reunions. An estimated 66,000 South Korean families are still waiting for such a chance to meet their relatives in the North
Photograph: Kim Do-hoon/AP


Nearly 400 elderly and frail Koreans attended the tearful and emotionally fraught reunion with family members
Photograph: KPPA/AFP/Getty Images


North Korean Sim Yeong-sik, 85, points to his family picture to show his South Korean relatives
Photograph: YONHAP/AFP/Getty Images



Source: The Hankyoreh 1, 2; KBS World; The Guardian 1, 2, 3

This is a long post but I thought it was important to have all of the information in one place. Reunification may be becoming less important to the younger generation now that many of the people who remember a united Korea are passing away, but it gives you a sense of how many families are still separated.

Comments

[shiroki-tenshi.livejournal.com]

I swear I'm not tearing up at work, it's just the onions I'm chopping up (or the really bad clam chowder...)

It's sad that these families reunited can't stay together...argh.

[itsanonyx.livejournal.com]

Sad and heartbreaking... *cries a little*

[baddiemey.livejournal.com]

All I can think is I hope she met another man after him. Lord that would such to never have sex again.

[juhli.livejournal.com]

this is making me cry, i can't imagine the pain they must have been in all these years.

[nekokonneko.livejournal.com]

honestly, i feel like the korean governments will just keep throwing out these bones, hosting these brief meet-ups, until all the survivors of the split are dead :/

[hipployta.livejournal.com]

WHO BROUGHT THIS ONION HERE??!!

No but this unbearably sad...I am sitting in Panera Bread right now and the lady next to me just asked if I'm okay.

[pastelpinklace.livejournal.com]

North korea is incredibly unstable and in the near future i definitely see a war happening with the north loosing almost instantly (I doubt china will actually send aid to the north, and russia probably wont give a shit hopefully)

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

It's incredibly sad. Of course I am happy for them that they got to meet, but only to be torn apart again... it hurts even me.

[mercury-sound.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, OP.
I just can't help but crying when I read these articles and see the pictures. I'm so happy for the families that finally got to meet, but that they even had to live separated for over 60 years in the first place ... it breaks my heart.

I've talked to a a couple of younger South Koreans about the reunification. I think they don't really believe in it or even want it, mainly b/c of the economic & financial help South Korea would have to extend to North Korea. I can't even disagree with them on that, since a similar thing happened back in Germany when the country was unified. But it makes me sad to think people with so much shared history might stay estranged like that ... I mean, I know it's much more complicated from a political and economic point of few, that's just my very personal, emotional reation.

[perseid.livejournal.com]

So many tears T__T