Reunion hopes fade for families torn apart by Korean war

STORY: 80-year-old Hwang Rae-ha despairs of ever seeing his mother again after the Korean war separated them in the 1950s.

He now lives in a South Korean border town that affords him occasional hazy glimpses of his old hometown in the North.

“Maybe she has passed as she’s over 100 by now. I want to see her one last time, but she doesn't even come to my dreams. My ancestors are perhaps not letting me see her.”

For families separated after the Korean war halted in a truce rather than a peace treaty, the only chance to see their loved ones again is through a lucky draw to participate in rare government-sponsored reunions.

Or by hiring brokers to arrange a secret meeting in China, but that is too costly for most.

In September, the South Korean government proposed a reunion event.

But North Korea has not even acknowledged receiving the suggestion.

These meetings are usually a barometer of the state of ties between the two sides technically still at war.

Hwang dismissed the offer made by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol as probably a half-hearted humanitarian gesture unlikely to bear fruit.

This 2018 event was the last reunion arranged by both governments.

Since 2000, about 100 families from each side have been brought together briefly.

And just a third of roughly 130,000 South Koreans who applied to participate are still alive.

Among those who consider themselves lucky is Shim Gu-seop.

Four decades after he was separated from his mother and two siblings, Shim re-united with his brother in the Chinese city of Yanji in 1994, helped by an ethnic Korean in China who brought the sibling there from his home in the North's easter city of Hamhung.

After his trips to China, the South Korean unification ministry entrusted to him a group that arranges private gatherings for separated families.

Shim has arranged 47 reunions and exchanged hundreds of letters for separated families.

But the global health crisis closed the border between North Korea and China - ending these private contacts, even for those who can afford the $7,000 needed to arrange them.

Now Shim is campaigning to let families exchange postcards, at least.

“Ten years from now, this separated family issue won’t exist. It’s just a matter of time. In five years, the separated families would be forgotten by the media and public. We will be forgotten.”