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Families reunited after fifty years apart

Published: 29 Sep. 2009, 07:55

Family members from South Korea on a bus bid a farewell to their North Korean relatives yesterday at the Mount Kumgang resort after a three-day reunion. [YONHAP]

MOUNT KUMGANG - Tears were shed, farewells were bid and shouts of what could have been their last words to each other were heard.

South Korean families yesterday parted ways with their relatives in North Korea, as their three-day reunions wrapped up yesterday at the scenic resort north of the border. Starting today, 99 North Koreans will stay at the same Mount Kumgang resort to be reunited with their relatives living in the South, about 450 in total. Their meetings will end Thursday.

In the first reunion in two years of families separated by the Korean War, South Koreans over the weekend had their brief encounter with the long-lost loved ones, including war prisoners and abductees.

Toward the end of their one-hour meeting yesterday, Jin Gok-soon couldn’t let go of the hands of her younger brother Young-ho, who was abducted by North Koreans 22 years ago while aboard the ship Dongjin.

“I can’t let you go like this. I just can’t,” said the teary Jin Gok-soon as she boarded the southbound bus.

War prisoner Lee Koe-seok, 79, spent time with his younger brother Jeong-soo, 69, from the South. The older brother promised he wouldn’t cry at their farewell, but it was he who first shed tears as the brothers went their separate ways.

With South Koreans aboard the bus heading south, hands were extended out over the windows as families held hands for one final time. The South Koreans crossed the border later yesterday.

While the Koreans bid their emotional goodbyes, government officials in Seoul were pondering the North’s request for aid.

Won Sei-hoon, head of the National Intelligence Service in Seoul, said yesterday that he would consider providing appropriate measures for North Korea in response to the ongoing family reunion meetings.

At the general meeting of the National Assembly’s standing committee on intelligence, Won said he would consult with relevant government departments, regarding aid and would consider providing it as long as strategic materials are not involved.

On Sunday, North Korea asked South Korea whether it would be willing to extend a “goodwill” measure in response to the reunion.

But the South Korean government remained tepid to Won’s idea. Vice Unification Minister Hong Yang-ho told reporters in Seoul yesterday that the “basic position is that we don’t link the inter-Korean exchange with the family reunion.”

A Blue House spokesman Park Sun-kyoo echoed the sentiment, though he qualified his remarks by saying, “when it is deemed necessary, the South Korean government will provide humanitarian aid. But we’re already supplying medicine for infants and seniors.”

By Yoo Jee-ho, pool reporters [[email protected]]