Separated families continue to hold onto hope for reunion

North Korea

Published: 25 Jun. 2023, 16:16 Updated: 25 Jun. 2023, 16:53

Separated families continue to hold onto hope for reunion

Two sisters, Kang Doo-ri from the South, right, and Kang Ho-rye from the North, embrace each other during the last inter-Korean family reunion held on Mount Geumgang on Aug. 24, 2018. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

Kim Sang-bok, 83, vividly remembers the days when she would take the train from her hometown in North Korea to the South.

“Just a few steps from where we used to live, near the mausoleum of King Kongmin, I could take the train that would go all the way to Seoul,” Kim says, sitting on her bed in a one-room apartment in Siheung, Gyeonggi, and reminiscing about the days she used to live in Kaesong nearly eight decades ago.

The city, once part of South Korea, came under North Korean jurisdiction after the 1950-53 Korean War ravaged both Koreas and fortified the heavily militarized border.

Kim is one of around 41,150 surviving Koreans in the South still searching for the relatives they were separated from during the conflict.

“I just want to hug her with my own arms, like this,” she says, hugging her own arms tightly as she spoke of her little sister Sang-sun.

But prospects are dwindling for people like Kim, as more than half of those registered with the government as searching for their relatives are aged 80 or over. Around 92,500 South Koreans once registered with the government as having a family member they were separated from during the war have already died, according to the Unification Ministry.

In this year alone, nearly 300 have died monthly.

Counterclockwise from top right, Kim Sun-ae, Koo Ye-ser and Kim Sang-bok, all of whom have lost at least one family member since the 1950-53 Korean War speak with the Korea JoongAng Daily at their residences in Incheon and Gyeonggi earlier this month. The war, which broke out on June 25, 1950, resulted in over a million missing families, many of whom have not been able to learn the whereabouts or wellbeing of their missing family member for decades of the two Koreas' division that continues today. On the bottom right corner are some members of civic groups rallying in Seoul on Feb. 22 to call for a family reunion. [PARK SANG-MOON/YONHAP]

Since the last inter-Korean reunion of separated families in 2018, relations between the two Koreas have hit rock bottom as the Kim Jong-un regime ramped up military provocations, not only testing intercontinental ballistic missiles but even attempting to launch a satellite into space, all the while ignoring calls for dialogue from South Korea and the United States.

Still, many separated families say they can only hope for a reunion.

“Every time June 25 looms closer, I cannot get my brother off my mind,” says Kim Sun-ae, 86, who has been looking for her older brother for most of her life since she left Haeju, South Hwanghae Province, a few years before the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950.

She was so small, she said, that one of a few South Koreans whom she understood to be intelligence officers carried her on his shoulders when they left Haeju.

“My oldest brother was studying in Hwangju at the time, and these intel people told me they will see my brother down south,” she said. “How was I to know that I would never see him again?”

Koo Ye-ser, an 86-year-old lifetime resident of Ganghwa Island, lost his brother to the North Korean soldiers who came to the island during their retreat following the Incheon amphibious landing led by the United States and the UN forces.

“I must have been around 13, and my brother in his 20s, when the North Koreans came to our island and took people,” Koo said. “My brother was very smart. He was fluent in Japanese, having had years of forced labor experience in Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea. His penmanship was excellent.”

His brother, if alive, would be 98 this year. Koo says he’s provided his DNA information to Red Cross Korea and the South Korean government in hopes that it will be a match with his brother or any of his brother’s relatives in the North.

“We’ve all seen how Germany was able to reunify,” Koo said, sitting cross-legged on the floor in his hanok (traditional Korean-style home) as he took a break from tending to his farm across the road. “Korea has advanced so much over the years, we should be able to solve this inter-Korean problem.”

Koo Ye-ser points to the photo of his older brother he lost during the 1950-53 Korean War when North Korean soldiers came into their town in Ganghwa Island, Incheon, and took his brother. The photo was taken on June 6 during his interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Reunions on TV

During the three years of the Korean War, the South Korean capital of Seoul was taken and reclaimed several times between the warring factions.

One of these battles, the Third Battle of Seoul, took place between December 1950 and January 1951, during which Chinese forces entered the war. The UN forces were pushed southward and so were the civilians.

By January 1951, there were as many as 4.8 million refugees amassed in the southern city of Busan. Not everyone was able to identify their relatives amid the swarms of people huddled around the station, which only grew as trains packed to the rooftop with refugees continued to pull in.

Housing built by refugees in Busan after the war [DONG DISTRICT OFFICE OF BUSAN]

With no smartphones or emails, many of these refugees were separated from their family members until 1983, when national broadcaster KBS came up with a program to reunite them on TV. The candidates could call in from either a public telephone or from KBS stations.

“Can you show me on which side of your face you had this scar for as long as you remember?” one old lady would ask a now grown-up woman, looking for a toddler she had lost during the war.

“Can you tell me your father’s name?” another candidate would ask on the program.

The gut-wrenching emotions displayed by the candidates on TV as they recognized their long-lost family members reverberated across the screen, and many viewers also shed tears.

One family reunites at a KBS studio in this file photo. [JOONGANG PHOTO]

A total of 100,952 South Koreans registered for the program, and around a 10th of them were reunited with their family members, according to Unesco, which registered the program on its documentary heritage list.

Kim Sang-bok also received a call from someone who could have been Sang-sun at this time.

Kim and Sang-sun, with a three-year age gap between them, were each sent to distant cousins’ homes before the war as it became more difficult for their parents to feed all of them. Kim recalls there were other siblings, but the only one left by her side after the war was her older sister. The two fled the war together.

“Hello?” said a voice on the other side of the line, Kim recalled. “Did you have a grandfather around when living with your siblings?”

Kim said no, and the person on the other side hung up.

Only later in conversations with her older sister did Kim find out that Sang-sun used to call one of their distant relatives her grandfather.

Separated families gathered outside the KBS Studio in Yeouido, western Seoul. [NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF KOREA]

“It still pains me to think that it could have been Sang-sun on the other side of the line,” Kim said.

Kim, who has been a Christian most of her life, says she prays for her sister every night.

“Only the Lord knows if we will be able to meet in this life,” she said.

Kim Sang-bok says she prays every day for her sister Sang-sun whom she lost during the war and has been trying to reconnect with ever since. This photo was taken at her residence in Siheung, Gyeonggi, on June 6. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Kim Sun-ae also registered her information with KBS. But by then, she had already tried numerous times to find her brothers via different organizations and groups that promised to locate them, only to find that they demanded extortionate prices and did not return her calls after she paid.

“I would take cabs all over the country to meet these people who would offer to find my brothers,” she said. “They all turned out to be frauds, and I wasted a lot of money.”

She would have liked to stop there, but even as she became frailer with age, the memories of her brothers became stronger.

“The eldest took such good care of me, he was the big brother who adored his kid sister,” she said, sitting by her bed and massaging her knees, which she says are often in pain despite medication.

“Kim Hyun-bok is his name,” she recalled. “And Kim Hyun-geun was the younger brother. I even see them in my dreams. And every time I relive moments with them in an interview like this, I cannot sleep for days.”

Kim Sun-ae is one of over a million Koreans separated since the Korean War. This photo was taken during her interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at her residence in Incheon on June 8. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Beyond the two Koreas

The humanitarian issue of family reunions between the two Koreas has often been subject to inter-Korean politics.

When a détente takes place, like the last one in 2018 between then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a reunion is likely to follow. One did follow then, four months after Kim crossed the inter-Korean border with Moon on TV.

When relations cool, however, so do the prospects for the families. The Covid-19 pandemic also shuttered the possibility for a few years as the North closed its borders.

Seoul most recently proposed a family reunion to the North in September last year, which was not met with a clear response from the regime until February this year.

An unknown North Korean organization, which is not listed with the Unification Ministry, requested that the head of the Inter-Korean Family Reunion Association, which is affiliated with the ministry, and other members of the association visit the North to discuss family reunions.

The Unification Ministry turned down the request, however, stating that the said organization does not exist.

As of May, there have been 21 family reunions hosted officially by the two Koreas, during which 20,761 people from both Koreas were able to see their relatives.

Each in-person reunion only lasted a few days, with many family members shedding tears as they parted ways not knowing when they will meet again.

Lines of people would be seen waving outside the bus, as their relatives waved back from the bus windows.

Separated families of the North saying goodbye from the bus that will take them back beyond the inter-Korean border on Aug. 25, 2018, after their 12 hours of reunion with their family in the South at Mount Geumgang. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

Such gut-wrenching experiences have given many separated families new perspectives when they see conflicts in other parts of the world today.

“The people of Ukraine have suffered so much in the ongoing war,” said Kim Sang-bok. “People who have been there know what it’s like. It’s the same for us separated families — only those who have been in my shoes know how I feel.”

Tired of waiting for inter-Korean rapprochements, some have turned to private organizations to exchange letters with their supposed family members in the North. According to the Unification Ministry, a total of 11,646 letters have been exchanged through such private agencies as of May this year.

“I would love to find out where my brother lives, even if it is only through letters,” said Koo. “But even if we cannot find him, I want to get in touch with his family members, if he had any children or grandchildren."

There is one member of the family who particularly reminds Koo of his older brother — his grandson.

"He is the only one in the family who really takes after what my brother used to look like," Koo said. "A reunion during my lifetime would be great,” Koo continued, “But I know that even after I pass on, my son will continue to wait.

"One day, we will be able to connect the dots, and find the missing pieces.”

As of December 2021, a total of around 25,000 people have participated in the Unification Ministry-run DNA collection program since 2014. The ministry opens the program annually to any separated family who wishes to join but has not been able to accommodate all of the applications at once. The applicants are placed on a roster until their turn comes.

Of around 10,000 who applied in 2021, only around 1,000 were able to complete the program, according to the ministry.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]