SEOUL: Elderly North and South Korean family members allowed to meet for the first time in nearly seven decades prepared to bid each other farewell…
SEOUL: Elderly North and South Korean family members allowed to meet for the first time in nearly seven decades prepared to bid each other farewell Wednesday (Aug 22), in all probability for the last time in their lives.
Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War, which left the peninsula split by the impenetrable Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and separated brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives.
Over the years most have died, and fewer than 60,000 South Koreans remain alive who have registered to meet their Northern kin at the occasional reunions – this week’s are the first for three years.
Those survivors lucky enough to be chosen to take part – 89 families this time, with a similar number to follow later this week – have to cram a lifetime’s relationship into just three days.
When they come to an end, the realities of age and the nuclear-armed North’s isolation mean they are unlikely ever to see each other again.
At a morning reunion before the final farewells, South Korean Kim Byung-Oh, 88, started to sob as soon as his younger sister joined him at the table.
