Lee Su-nam knows what he will say to his North Korean brother, who he hasn’t seen in nearly 70 years
T he most powerful emotions Lee Su-nam ever felt were on the afternoon of 25 July. He was sitting in his living room talking to his daughter who was visiting when his phone rang. The conversation lasted only a minute, but Lee discovered his older brother, long presumed dead, was alive and living in North Korea.
The last time Lee saw his brother, Lee Jong-seong, was August 1950, a day he remembers for the heat and ripeness of the peaches on the trees. As the North Korean army approached Seoul, Lee’s parents decided to send their eldest son away for fear he would be conscripted into the communist militia if he remained. He was captured on the road and the family spent the next 68 years assuming he died in the 1950-53 Korean war.
Since the beginning of the year, relations between North and South Korea have improved dramatically, and as part of that rapprochement, the two sides have organised reunions this week between long-separated families .
The meetings are the first of their kind since 2015, but those participating have little knowledge of what to expect. Lee Su-nam has a single piece of paper confirming his brother’s age, 86, and the fact he is alive. It also lists a wife and child, and the promising if hard-to-decipher comment that more extended family could also be living in the North.
“The first thing I’m going to say to my brother is, ‘thank you for being alive,’” Lee, 76, said as he spread ageing family photos on his kitchen table. “But I also need to be careful, I know there are lots of things we can’t talk about because of the politics in the North.”
“We have been separated for such a long time with no connection.
