Park Jin-hai primarily focuses on K-dramas, entertainment shows and actor interviews. Beyond that, she also pens articles covering the broader arts scene, with a particular emphasis on classical music, dance and various aspects of lifestyle. Since joining The Korea Times in 2013, she has made significant contributions in the realms of hallyu (Korean wave), industry news and international affairs.
Home is right there but out of reach
Hwang Rae-ha, 76, a farmer on Gyodong Island, Incheon, fled his hometown in Haeseong, Yeonbaek County (now Yonan County) in 1950 at age 8, in a wooden boat to escape North Korean soldiers during the Korean War. He says his only wish is to meet his mother again even if that is in his sleep. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
By Park Jin-hai
Separated families in long wait for reunion
By Park Jin-hai
Gyodong Island, Incheon ― With the two Koreas taking steps to disarm the Joint Security Area (JSA) and allow soldiers and civilians to cross the Military Demarcation Line there, following the three inter-Korean summits this year alone, hope for permanent peace on the peninsula runs higher than ever before.
Gyodong, a small island 70 kilometers northwest of central Seoul, is home to around 20,000 people who were displaced during the 1950-53 Korean War. After the outbreak of the war, they fled their homes now in North Korea and settled on this small island near the inter-Korean maritime border.
For the islanders, peace means their way back home to Yeonbaek County in Hwanghae Province, North Korea, some 65 years belatedly.
From the island, people used to be able to even cross the Jo River (a Han River estuary) at low tide to reach Yeonbaek County. After the war the area has been designated as falling within the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) in its entirety.
After a less than two-hour drive from Seoul and arriving via Gyodong Bridge, the only bridge that connects the island and Ganghwa Island, visitors must stop at a military checkpoint to obtain an entrance permit by showing their ID cards. Over the 3.44-kilometer bridge to the island, people can see North Korean towns in Hwanghae Province on the right side and small Seokmo Island and other small islands that belong to South Korea's Ganghwa Island on the left.
On the island, where two-thirds of its coastline, extending 37.5 kilometers, are fenced off with barbwire, North Korean refugees and their families, who take the lion's share of its residents, are counting on the day they can return home, just 2.6 kilometers away, as freely as birds flying over the maritime boundary Northern Limit Line (NLL).
Hwang Rae-ha, 76, a farmer, heads a small group of North Korean-born residents in the village. The youngest boy of a family with seven siblings fled his hometown in Haeseong, Yeonbaek County (now Yonan County) in August 1950 at age 8, riding on a wooden boat to escape North Korean soldiers during the Korean War.
He says not a single day has passed without thinking of his mother and two sisters in North Korea. “By now, my mother would be 120, my two sisters 87 and 74. For me, 'mother' is a heart-wrenching word,” said Hwang, who remembers his childhood home's address so clearly. He recalls his mother as a strong woman who braved her life to save the whole family from war and poverty.
His brothers made the dangerous 20-minute trip over the water to land on Gyodong first and his mother and sisters escaped the North and joined later. “As the war neared the end, my mother carried my two sisters back to our old house in Yeonbaek because she wanted to bring back the brass rice bowls she buried in the yard under the bombardment. Back then, the brassware was worth a fortune. I didn't know at that time, what I thought would be just a short goodbye would ultimately turn out to be our separation for this long,” he said.
On a clear day, visitors to Manghyangdae (translated as observatory for the homesick) can see farmhouses and fields in Yeonbaek County, Hwanghae Province, North Korea, just 2.6 kilometers away, across the Jo River that divides the two countries. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
Whenever he misses his long-lost family he climbs the hills of Seohan, the southwestern part of Gyodong, with binoculars. “In clear weather, I could see with naked eyes my farmhouse and the field where our family planted millets across the river. To my horror, one day I saw a Kim Il-sung statue for propaganda purposes established next to my home.”
He started his own family in Gyodong. After doing many manual jobs at construction sites across the country and joining the Vietnam War to make ends meet, Hwang bought 25,000 square meters of rice fields in Gyodong.
“Having home so close but not being able to return for so long” is more tormenting, he says. Since 1988, he has applied for sporadic family reunion opportunities during the times of inter-Korean rapprochement but he has not been included in the small group of lucky people.
“It feels like yesterday. Time flies,” he sighs. “Many separated families, dreaming of being reunited, are getting old. A lot of people die each year in the long wait,” he said.
Hwang is among the 130,000 people separated from family by the 1950-53 Korean War who registered with a government-run system for separated families managed by the Ministry of Unification. Only 2 percent of those applied, or 2,746 people, could get to see their families again.
With more than 58,000 people separated from their families are still alive, one out of five are older than 90.
Hwang built a small house on his land, looking out toward the North. “Each night, I sleep heading to the North, wishing to meet my mother again in my sleeping dreams. I don't think my mother still be alive, but my only remaining wish is to visit her grave and call the word mother out loud.”