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| Surviving separated family members of the Korean War, who are aging rapidly, are rushing to take DNA tests that will allow their offspring to meet future relatives in North Korea. / Yonhap |
By Hong Dam-young
More South Koreans who were separated from their families because of the Korean War are taking a DNA test.
The collected genetic data will allow chronicling and verification of their separated families and increase the chance their offspring will meet future relatives in North Korea, Segye Ilbo reported, Thursday.
The results will be kept as a database and DNA samples will be stored in a cryogenic refrigeration system.
The project was initiated in 2014 under the government's ordinance to confirm separated families and promote their exchanges. It has been operating through bidding, and Dowgene has been testing the applicants' DNA for the past three years.
The Ministry of Unification collaborated with the Korea National Red Cross in starting the project. About 2000 people so far this year have agreed to take the test, according to the ministry.
But chances of people meeting lost family members at an inter-Korea exchange program seem unlikely because relations between the two Koreas have grown frostier.
Some 60 percent of the 63,670 surviving separate family members in South Korea are in their 80s to 90s, according to government data. But more than half the separated families the Seoul government documented between 1988 and 2016 have died.
It is the first time the number of dead has exceeded the living.
"Finding separated families depending solely on memories can have its own limitation because too much time has passed since the division," an official from Dowgene said.
"But genes can solve the problem."
