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Two sides should do more to ease pains of separation
Eighty-nine South Koreans had tearful reunions with family members they were separated from by the 1950-53 Korean War, at a Mount Geumgang resort on North Korea's east coast Monday. The emotional event will continue until Wednesday, during which they will meet on six occasions for a total of 11 hours.
Undoubtedly the three-day reunions are too short for the people to come to terms with seven decades of separation. Their ambivalent feelings ― joy of meeting loved ones and sadness for their separation ― will soon give way to the pain of parting again. At the resort from Friday to Sunday, 83 North Koreans will also be reunited with their long-lost family members from the South.
We hope the two events will help the two Koreas allow more separated families to meet more frequently. The reunions are part of the Panmunjeom Declaration that President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un issued at the end of their historic April 27 summit. They agreed to organize the reunions for humanitarian purposes around the Aug. 15 Liberation Day.
The meetings come two years and 10 month after the last such event was held in October 2015. There have so far been 20 rounds of reunions since the South and the North staged the first inter-Korean summit in June 2000. But such events have been much affected by ties between the two rivals and geopolitical developments on the peninsula.
The latest reunions show the separated families are getting old, making it even more urgent for the authorities on both sides to arrange more meetings before they die. This time the families include a 101-year-old South Korean who is meeting his daughter-in-law and her daughters from the North. He is the oldest one, but most of the other visitors are in their 80s and 90s.
According to the Ministry of Unification, the number of registered separated families is estimated at 132,000. And 75,000, or 55 percent, of them have already died. Sixty-three percent of the surviving 57,000 families are over 80 years old. Twenty-one percent, or 12,100, are 90 or older.
Sadly, it is almost impossible for the survivors to find and meet their sons or daughters, not to mention their parents, because 65 years have already passed since the Korean War which ended in July 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty. So most visitors are now meeting their grandchildren, cousins or other relatives.
The prospect of their reunions will be far bleaker, if meetings continue to take place once or twice a year. For this reason, Seoul and Pyongyang need to work out fundamental and comprehensive measures to help the separated families reunite before it is too late.
Most of all, the two sides should make all-out efforts to confirm if the survivors' families are still living. Then they must allow them to exchange letters even if they cannot meet immediately. It would also be good for these families to talk to each other through videophone.
It is imperative for the two Koreas to hold regular reunions more frequently without these being affected by the geopolitical situation. The best way is to set up reunion centers on each side of the border so separated families can meet whenever they want.
