{"id":373881,"date":"2018-08-18T10:45:10","date_gmt":"2018-08-18T09:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-tragedy-of-families-split-by-the-korean-war\/"},"modified":"2018-08-18T10:45:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-18T09:45:10","slug":"the-tragedy-of-families-split-by-the-korean-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-tragedy-of-families-split-by-the-korean-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tragedy of Families Split by the Korean War"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

This past July marked the 65th anniversary of the armistice that halted the Korean War<\/a>. In addition to leaving nearly 5 million dead, injured, or missing, this bloody conflict forcibly separated nearly 10 million Korean families on either side of the\u00a038th<\/sup>\u00a0parallel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Since the1980s, a mere 20 face-to-face reunions have been held under tightly controlled conditions, with the last such event occurring in 2015.\u00a0These reunions are infrequent one-time events–no one has ever been given a second chance to see their relatives on the other side of the border.\u00a0Family members who have been separated since the war are given a single opportunity to see long-lost loved ones for a few short hours, after which they must once again separate. In South Korea, the majority of the over\u00a0132,000\u00a0separated family members are 80 or older, and more than half of those applying for reunions between 1988 and 2018 have died without ever having had the chance to see their loved ones in the across the border.\u00a0At this point, in order for all surviving separated family members to be able to see their relatives in the North at least once before they perish, a minimum of 7,300 reunions<\/a> must occur per year.<\/p>\n

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As a result of the 2018 Panmunjom declaration<\/a>, North and South Korea agreed to hold an additional reunion<\/p>\n

in August of this year. South Korea uses a lottery system to randomly select a small number of surviving family members for reunion<\/a> events, and this year\u2019s event will include\u00a0only\u00a098\u00a0elderly survivors\u00a0from South. A journalist who was in attendance during the public screening for the initial participant pool described the Red Cross office where the event was held as \u201ca\u00a0sea\u00a0of\u00a0tears\u201d echoing with the cries of grief-stricken elderly survivors who did not make the list.\u00a0\u00a0One 95-year old man, recognizing this as his final opportunity to see his loved ones, begged the government to open the demilitarized zone for a single month so that all separated family members would have the chance to see their loved ones at least once. “I don’t remember how many times I applied.\u00a0 President Moon and Chairman Kim can meet. Why can’t I meet my family in the North?\u201d A 90-year-old woman refused to leave the building, pleading to be allowed to see the 3-year old daughter she left in North Korea over 68 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I visited South Korea in May as part of an international peace<\/a> delegation, I met a female peace activist whose elderly mother, a farmer in a South Korean border town, was separated from her family during the war.\u00a0\u00a0She gave me a special gift: a handmade scarf upon which was inscribed a poem written by her mother.\u00a0\u00a0While working the fields, her mother would gaze at her hometown across the border\u2014easily visible on a clear day\u2014wondering ceaselessly about the family she left behind more than six decades ago.<\/p>\n

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\n

The Thousand-Mile River<\/strong>
Lee Bum-og<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

The narrow river separating us may as well be a thousand miles wide
I can see a home to which I cannot return
The Han River that meets the Imjin and the Yaesung flows to the ocean
It is said that humans are highest order of creation
But we are more wretched than any beast
Birds fly to their homes and return
To my eyes, birds scorn humans.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

How can there be a half-century of separation between brothers and sisters, between parents and children?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amid the rain of bombs,
I fled to save my life
The friends who fled have all dispersed here and there
With silvery hair they are soon to depart this world.
Can those who still live ever feel the soil of home beneath their feet?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Her searing poem depicts her life in a divided Korea as a state of permanent longing that is coming to a bitter end. For her and tens of thousands like her, every day counts.\u00a0It is absolutely essential that we\u00a0work to prioritize the\u00a0regularization of North-South family reunions and the establishment of permanent venues in both North and South Korea for this purpose. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past July marked the 65th anniversary of the armistice that halted the Korean War. In addition to leaving nearly 5 million dead, injured, or missing, this bloody conflict forcibly separated nearly 10 million Korean families on either side of the\u00a038th\u00a0parallel.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Since the1980s, a mere 20 face-to-face reunions have been held under tightly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-373881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}