hankyoreh

their older brother from North Korea

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer and press pool

“My sister went North during the Korean War when her fiancee was drafted into the North Korean volunteer army. I thought she was dead, and now here she is. . . .”

Hong Myung-ja, 65, was weeping after embracing her sister Sok-sun, 80, at the reunion center for members of divided families. Hong, who is South Korean, was astonished that the two were able to reunite at all.

“Our parents tried to stop her, and my mother was tormented after she went after her fiancee,” she said. “Later, we asked some shamans, and they all said she was dead. We even held a ‘soul wedding’ [a posthumous ceremony] for them.”

The second round of divided family reunions began at the Mt. Keumgang resort on Feb. 23. This time, the meetings involved North Korean family members seeking own their kin in the South. Eighty-eight North Korean applicants ended up meeting with 357 South Korean family members. Over the course of their group reunions and dinner, they shared more than six decades’ worth of unshared conversations.

Feb. 23.

Many of the North Korean reunion applicants had fallen out of touch after being drafted into the volunteer army for the Korean War. Despite the name, the civilian males were indeed forcibly drafted by the North Korean People’s Army, many of them still teenagers.

“We lived in Sinnae [a neighborhood of Seoul] during the Korean War, and my brother, who was 18, was drafted into the volunteer army in place of our father,” explained Lim Geum-young, 86, after meeting his now 83-year-old brother Son-young, who lives in North Korea.

“We thought he was dead - we even held memorial rites for him,” the emotional older brother added. “It’s such a joy to see him again.”

Yu Jeong-hee, 79, told a similar story after meeting her North Korean brother Geun-cheol, 81.

“They said my brother went into the volunteer army, and when we didn’t hear anything about him, my mother went to a shaman to ask his whereabouts,” she explained through uncontrollable tears. “We finally gave up searching, and we even registered him as dead. Then, out of nowhere, we got the call.”

For Lee Young-woo, who met his 84-year-old older brother Jung-woo - a volunteer North Korean army draftee from Cheongsong County, North Gyeongsang Province - the reunion came after some frustration.

“I applied for a reunion in the past, but we were never selected,” an emotionally overcome Lee said. “This time, my brother sought me out.”

During the first set of reunions, some of the meetings took place between North Korean family members and their relatives who had remained in the South after being captured while fighting for the North Korean People’s Army. The Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan, shared profiles on two of them in its Feb. 22 edition: Cho Ki-dok, 92, who met his son and daughter-in-law from North Korea, and Baek Gwan-su, 90, who met his North Korean half-sibling and grandchild.

In North Korea, family members of people who went South and anticommunist POWs from the Korean War have been considered the “kin of traitors” and subjected to discrimination. In Cho and Baek’s cases, the family members are believed to have received favorable treatment as the kin of “men of national merit” after the two men were processed as war casualties.

Ri Hyung-woo (right) from North Korea talks with Lee Sun-woo

As with the first reunions, South Korean family at the second reunions assembled the day before at Hanwha Resort in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, and left for Mt Keumgang at around 8:20 am. After arriving at the reunion venue around 1 pm, they met at 3 pm for the group reunions - a tearful encounter with North Korean family more than six decades in the making. Later, the family members got together for dinner at 7 pm.

Like the first reunions, the second reunions are a three-day event, which is scheduled to continue until Feb. 25.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]