Relatives from family separated by Korean War meet for 1st time in 3rd country

SEOUL, Nov. 1 (Yonhap) -- Two relatives from a family separated by the 1950-53 Korean War met for the first time in a third country in September, marking a rare reunion amid frozen inter-Korean relations. Tensions remain high on the divided Korean Peninsula as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ruled out talks with South Korea and defined inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other." The meeting came five months after South Korea's Unification Ministry received a request from a North Korean member of a separated family seeking help to find a maternal uncle in South Korea. The request was relayed to the ministry by a North Korean defector living in the South. The ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, located the uncle in its database of separated families, only to learn that he had died 30 years earlier. After trying to contact the uncle's adult children using information in the database, a ministry official made contact with a 65-year-old cousin living in Gyeonggi Province near Seoul. A man fills out an application to find separated family members in North Korea in this file photo taken on Sept. 27, 2023. (Yonhap) The South Korean cousin readily agreed to contact the North Korean relative, saying the cousin's late parents had hoped until their final days to meet family members left behind in the North, according to the ministry. The two first made contact through a mobile messaging app before eventually meeting face-to-face in a third country in September, bringing together two second-generation members of the separated family. It was not immediately clear how the North Korean relative traveled to the third country. It marked the first privately arranged family reunion reported to the South Korean government in about two years amid a prolonged halt in inter-Korean exchanges, according to the ministry. Unlike most privately arranged reunions, in which relatives in South Korea look for family members in the North with the help of brokers, the latest case began with the North Korean relative trying to locate family in the South and culminated in a reunion with help from the South Korean government. The two countries technically remain at war as the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The inter-Korean border is sealed and there is no mail, phone or other direct means of communication between ordinary people of the two Koreas. South and North Korea have previously held government-arranged temporary reunions for separated families, often around major holidays, such as Chuseok, a major holiday celebrated in both countries. The Koreas last held such reunions at Mount Kumgang, a scenic resort on the North's east coast, in August 2018, amid a brief thaw in inter-Korean relations. Earlier that year, in February, North Korea sent athletes to compete in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea and dispatched a high-level delegation, including Kim Jong-un's sister Kim Yo-jong, to the opening ceremony. The issue of separated families remains a pressing humanitarian concern on the divided peninsula, as about two-thirds of surviving registered family members are 80 or older and many hope to see their long-lost relatives before they die. In September, President Lee Jae Myung said resolving the issue of families separated by the Korean War should be the first priority for South and North Korea. "Eight years have passed since the last reunion, and we can no longer afford to delay this," Lee said in a statement marking the fourth Separated Families Day. "Families should be able to reach and see one another, no matter where in the world they live." As of late August, a total of 134,848 South Koreans had registered as having separated family members in the North, but only 32,948 were still alive, according to ministry data submitted to Rep. Woo Won-shik of the ruling Democratic Party. Some people have turned to private channels to locate and meet their family members in the North. Privately arranged reunions peaked in 2003, when 283 cases were reported, before falling to seven in 2010 and to one case each in 2017, 2018 and 2019. No such reunions were reported from 2020 through 2023 amid severed inter-Korean ties and North Korea's border closure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The last privately arranged reunion took place in October 2024, when an octogenarian South Korean living overseas visited North Korea to meet a nephew with help from an overseas pro-North Korean organization. yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr(END)