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South Korean holds first private family reunion in North Korea in five years

Published: 10 Dec. 2024, 11:35

A man fills out an application form to find his separated family in North Korea, during an event in central Seoul on Sept. 27, 2023. [YONHAP]

A South Korean national residing in Australia traveled to North Korea and met with two nephews in October in the first privately arranged separated families reunion in five years, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said Tuesday.

The 80-something person, who also holds Australian citizenship, reported the North Korean trip to the ministry following the reunion, ministry officials said.

By law, South Koreans with permanent residency abroad or those employed overseas must report trips to North Korea between three days before departure and 10 days after their return. However, South Koreans in general require approval from the unification minister for such trips.

It remains unknown how the Australia-based South Korean had received approval from North Korean authorities for the trip.

The latest meeting marks the first privately arranged reunion reported since 2019 of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and the subsequent division of the Korean Peninsula.

Amid frosty inter-Korean relations, separated families in South Korea have had no exchanges or reunions with their relatives in North Korea either at government or civilian levels for years.

Privately brokered family reunions gained traction in the late 1990s, reaching a peak of 283 cases in 2003. However, the number sharply declined to just seven in 2010, and only a single case was reported per year from 2017-2019.

Of them, the last reunion that took place within North Korea was in 2016, with the majority of reunions since the 2010s occurring outside the Korean Peninsula.

Reunions of separated families through an inter-Korean agreement have not taken place since the last one in August 2018.

Since the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, the two Koreas have held 21 rounds of family reunions, with around 134,160 people registering with the South Korean government as of August, expressing their wish to reunite with families in North Korea.

Most families separated between South and North Korea are unable to reunite, as the two Koreas technically remain at war since the Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

A unification ministry official noted the "exceptionality" of the latest reunion case, saying that it would be "too much" to interpret it as a sign of a policy shift from North Korea.

Yonhap