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AUGUST 18 , 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 32 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK Reuniting Families Of eager anticipation and crushed hopes By LAXMI NAKARMI Seoul When 71-year-old Chang I Yoon first learned last month that his 109-year-old mother was still alive in North Korea, he nearly fainted. "I could not find words to describe my feeling," he told Asiaweek on Aug. 6. "My throat was choked and my heart started beating fast." He added tearfully: "She is still alive because she wanted to be hugged by her youngest son." But then came the bombshell. On Aug. 9, Red Cross officials visited his home in Pusan and informed him there had been a mistake; his mother was in fact dead. Chang fainted for real this time and was hospitalized. Such are the highs and lows ahead of Aug. 15, Korea's Liberation Day. That day, 100 South Koreans are to travel to Pyongyang to be reunited for three days with long-lost relatives on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone. North Korea will also be sending 100 of its citizens to Seoul. The family-reunion exchange visits are the most tangible fruit so far of the historic summit in June. Since that meeting, the rapprochement has continued, with the two sides holding government-level talks and reaching agreement on such matters as restoring rail links between the two Koreas. But the family reunions mark the biggest breakthrough yet. It is an attempt to heal the pain of families torn apart by the Korean War 50 years ago. In Chang's case, he was just 20 years old when he left his home in Pyongyang and fled to the South to avoid being conscripted into the North Korean army. He thought he would be able to see his mother again in a matter of days. But the return trip never materialized. He eventually settled in Pusan, where today he and one of his sons run a small family business. Previously, the only way for South Koreans such as Chang to meet their separated families — or even just find out whether they were still alive — was to go to China's northeastern Jilin province, which borders North Korea. There, at great cost, they could hire ethnic Korean Chinese to enter North Korea and search for their relatives. "Everything had to be done without the knowledge of the Pyongyang government," says a South Korean social worker who spent a few years in China organizing such ventures. "Finding a relative was not that difficult compared to the enormity of the task of smuggling the relatives into China without proper travel documents. In two years, I arranged the secret reunion of only five or so families." South Korean officials hope that such cloak-and-dagger methods will no longer be necessary as officially sanctioned meetings become regular events. When the organizer, the South Korean Red Cross, started accepting applications from those seeking family reunions in North Korea, some 700,000 names poured in. Out of those applicants, the government selected 200 names, among them Chang's, and sent them to North Korea, where officials sought to confirm whether their relatives were still alive. The North Koreans located the families of 132 South Korean applicants; the Red Cross was left with the job of denying 32 of them permission to go to Pyongyang. Of the lucky 100, 88 are 70 years or older, including 20 in their 80s and three in their 90s. By contrast, only 29 people in the North Korean delegation to Seoul are 70 years or older. Whereas computer selection has ensured a diverse crowd in the South Korean team, Pyongyang seems to have chosen its 100 according to their social and political importance. Yoo Mi Young, the wife of a former South Korean foreign minister who sought asylum in the U.S. in the late 1970s and later defected to North Korea, will be leading the North Korean visitors, who include artists, authors, scientists and senior government officials. But for Chang, the event has no doubt lost much of its appeal. His despair is surely matched only by the joy he felt when he was led to believe — mistakenly — that his mother was alive. (The mix-up was apparently the result of an administrative error on the North Koreans' part. Pyongyang did not elaborate on their mistake beyond admitting it.) Before he heard the bad news, Chang told Asiaweek: "It is time now for our leaders to put the past behind and allow us to freely visit our family members." The two governments appear to be moving in that direction. For Chang, however, it all comes too late. Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com
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