SEOUL, South Korea - The first reunions of North and South Koreans in more than three years were too late for 90-year-old Seo Jeongsuk. She died in South Korea just 15 days ago.
So the daughter she grew old with, Kim Yong-ja, could not reintroduce her to the one she had not seen in more than 60 years. Kim, 68, could only sob and hand her long-lost sister a framed photograph of Seo, according to South Korean media reports.
Kim Yong Sil clasped the photo to her chest and said, “It’s Mom’s photo.”
Dozens of elderly Koreans wept and embraced in a rush of words and emotion Thursday at North Korea’s Diamond Mountain resort, in a rare period of detente between two rivals that were once a single country. The reunions were all the more poignant because the participants will part again in a few days, likely forever.
South Korean TV showed old women in brightly colored traditional dresses talking and hugging, families trading photographs of relatives who couldn’t attend or had died. Two men in suits and ties wiped away tears, grasped each other by the necks and pressed their foreheads together as cameras flashed. One old man was wheeled in on a stretcher, his head propped on a pillow, a blue blanket wrapped tightly around him.
Aging and illness made some reunions bittersweet.
“Sister, why can’t you hear me?” North Korean Ri Jong Sil, 84, asked 87-year-old Lee Young-sil, who has difficulty recognizing people because of Alzheimer’s disease, according to pool reports.
Tears flowed down Ri’s deeply wrinkled face as Lee’s daughter began sobbing, telling her mother: “Mom, it’s my aunt. It’s my aunt. She’s your sister.”
The difference in the sisters’ family name is a product of the Korean Peninsula’s division: It’s basically the same family name but each country uses different spelling rules in both Korean and English.
Ri Chol Ho, 77, from North Korea, used a piece of paper to communicate with his 81-year old brother from South Korea, Lee Myeong-ho, who has a hearing problem.
“Mother used to tell me that you would return home and buy me a pair of rubber shoes,” Ri wrote on the paper that he passed to his brother, according to the pool reports.
About 80 South Koreans traveled through falling snow with their families to meet children, brothers, sisters, spouses and other relatives. Seoul had said about 180 North Koreans were expected.
Millions were separated from loved ones by the tumult and bloodshed of the three-year Korean War that ended in1953, but few have been reunited. During a previous period of inter-Korean rapprochement, about 22,000 Koreans had brief reunions - 18,000 in person and others by video. None got a second chance to reunite, Seoul has said.
Thursday’s reunions were arranged after impoverished North Korea began calling recently for better ties with South Korea, in what outside analysts said is an attempt to win badly needed foreign investment and aid. The North, however, sent mixed signals by threatening to scrap the reunions to protest annual military drills between Seoul and Washington set to start Monday.
Last week, North Korea decided to honor its promise to allow the reunions after South Korea agreed to North Korea’s proposal that the rivals stop insulting each other. In South Korea, there are still worries that the reunions might be disrupted because of the impending military drills.
The reunions are broken into two parts. The reunions that began Thursday end Saturday. A second group of about 360 South Koreans plans to visit the mountain resort Sunday to meet with 88 elderly North Koreans. Those reunions end Tuesday.
Both governments normally ban their citizens from visiting one another or even exchanging letters, phone calls or emails.
The two Koreas have been in a near-constant standoff since an armistice ended the Korean War. It hasn’t been replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically in a state of war. About 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter aggression from North Korea.
In 2000, South Korea created a computerized lottery system for South Koreans hoping for reunions, and since then nearly 130,000 people, most in their 70s or older, have entered.
Only about 70,000 are still alive. It’s not known how North Korea selects people who attend reunions. South Korean media reported the North usually chooses those loyal to its authoritarian government.
According to media reports, it was only through the application process that 93-year-old Kang Neung-hwan realized that he had left a son behind when he left North Korea during the war. Kang Jong Kuk, now 64, had been in his mother’s womb at the time, and his father had not been aware that she was pregnant.
And when they finally met Thursday, the elder Kang could not resist a little gentle teasing.
“You look old,” he told his son. “Come give me a hug.” Information for this article was contributed by Kwon Su Hyeon and Eric Talmadge of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/21/2014