Korean families reunite after 65 years apart

As the husband she last saw 65 years ago hugged her on Tuesday, Lee Soon-kyu, an 85-year-old grandmother from South Korea, smiled shyly, like the young bride she once was.

Lee had been married to Oh In-se for only seven months and was five-months pregnant when the Korean War erupted in 1950.

Oh disappeared into the conflict and ended up in North Korea when the war was halted three-years later by a truce that left the Korean Peninsula divided.

The spouses did not see each other again until Oh showed up wearing a black fedora as part of the first reunions of war-separated relatives the two Koreas have arranged in nearly two years.

“I can’t tell how much I missed you,” said Lee, who never remarried and raised her son alone.

“I have wept so much thinking of us that there are no tears left in me.”

Oh, holding her hand, said, “My dear, I didn’t know that the war would do this to us.”

Lee and the couple’s son, Oh Jang-gyun (64) were among the 389 South Koreans who crossed the heavily-armed border into North Korea in buses and ambulances on Tuesday to meet with 96 elderly North Korean partners and relatives.

Lee said that after her husband appeared to her in a dream in 1978, she gave him up for dead, and began holding the annual ritual for a deceased relative.

The biggest surprise in her life came after the Koreas agreed in September to hold a new round of family reunions and she heard from the South Korean Red Cross that her husband was alive in the North and was looking for her.

Since then, she had been busy preparing for their meeting, digging up an old wedding photograph and buying a wristwatch as a gift.

The couple’s names were inscribed on the back.

Their time was to be painfully brief. They were granted permission to be together for only 12 hours, in group and private sessions, until Thursday, when they will have to part again.

On Thursday, an additional 90 elderly South Koreans will cross the border for another round of three-day reunions with 188 relatives in the North.

The reunions, at the Diamond Mountain resort in southeastern North Korea, are a rare but highly emotional glimpse at the pain the long political divide on the peninsula has inflicted on families separated by the war.

For more than six decades, they have been forbidden to exchange letters, phone calls or emails, much less to meet.

While their governments have arranged occasional reunions, these have been limited to a couple of hundred people.

Family reunions

Lee Ok-yeon (88) declined to hold the hands of her North Korean husband, Chae Hoon-shik (88), saying that it was “pointless” after such a long separation.

But her 65-year-old South Korean son, Hee-yang, hugged his father in tears.“Father, I am your son,” he said.

The hall where the reunions took place echoed with weeping and laughter as siblings hugged one another and graying children buried their tearful faces in the laps of parents who had shown up in wheelchairs, barely recognising them.

A 65-year-old South Korean, Shin Yeon-ja, told her North Korean father, Jong Se-hwan (87) that his wife was still alive in the South but too weak to make the cross-border journey.

On Tuesday, two elderly South Korean women had to be taken across the border in ambulances so they could reunite with brothers from the North.

South Korea has repeatedly called for more reunions, which are widely viewed as a barometer of relations between the two states.

However, given the fluctuating political tensions on the peninsula, only 18,800 Koreans have been allowed to participate in 19 face-to-face reunions since 1985, when the first gatherings were held.

More than half of the 66,000 South Koreans waiting for reunions are in their 80s or older.

South Korea selects the candidates for reunions by lottery, while the North is believed to give priority to people deemed loyal to the government.

On Tuesday, some visitors from the South carried prewar photographs to help their siblings to recognise them.

They had also packed photographs of their hometowns and of the grave sites of dead relatives, as well as underwear, medicine, cash and other gifts.

The South Korean delegation’s crossing was delayed briefly when North Korean border guards demanded to hold the laptop computers of South Korean reporters overnight for inspection.

The reporters resisted the demand but let the officials search through their computers while they watched.

Foreign reporters were not allowed to cover the event.

New York Times service