By Lee Seung-joon
With the end of the year approaching, retiree Jang Sei-hee feels an extra bite in the wind knowing another year has passed without having seen or heard from his family members in North Korea, separated since the 1950-53 Korean War.
The youngest of eight children, he has an 83-year-old sister and 84-year-old brother who, if still alive, he hopes to meet one day through an inter-Korean family reunion.
“The situation is very urgent because my siblings may not have lots of time to live,” Jang, 67, said.
He is one of 71,000 South Koreans waiting to meet their loved ones through the reunions facilitated by the Red Cross branches of each side. Amid political tensions that have severely restricted or delayed the program, they continue to wait to meet their relatives for a brief moment, or at least find out information of their status. But time is quickly running out.
The issue is back in the spotlight reflecting a slight warming trend as regional players seek to resume multilateral negotiations on Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
Earlier this month South Korea’s Red Cross chief Yu Jung-keun suggested holding a fresh round of the reunions to a North Korean Red Cross official on the sidelines of a conference in Geneva. However, the North Korean official said a reunion would be difficult within 2011 as the events take about two months to prepare. Still, analysts suggest the both sides appear motivated to restart the process.
While the two Koreas continue to wrangle over the details, aging citizens like Jang are left to nurse their memories.
The life expectancy for males in the North is 64 years, while that for females is 72 according to 2011 World Population Data Sheet by the Population Reference Bureau.
Jang has eight siblings and his parents originally lived in North Gyeongsang Province. Though he was not old enough to attend an elementary school when the war broke out, he clearly remembers where his siblings were before they were separated.
His 18-year-old sister Ok-hee relocated to Pyongyang when her husband got a job there at a railway station. His brother, Sei-young had worked in Pyongyang but later returned home, where he worked as an accountant at a thread factory.
Jang remembers little of the day Sei-young followed the company back to the North after the war broke out. “He gave me two plastic bags full of cigarette cartons and said, ‘Give these to dad, I am going far away,’” he recalled.
The reunions, agreed to during a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000 between the late former President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, seek to write happy endings to such tragic stories. Over a dozen rounds of the emotional meetings have brought together some 21,000 family members.
But according to government data, nearly 45,000 have passed away without a reunion with their loved ones.
The reunions, along with other forms of cross-border cooperation, have dropped significantly since 2008 when the Lee administration took office and employed a hard-line approach. Lee ended shipments of massive aid and tied their provision to denuclearization steps in a bid to fundamentally change Pyongyang’s behavior.
Inter-Korean relations froze further after North Korea deliberately fired around 170 artillery shells and rockets at Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23, 2010, claiming two marines and two civilians, and injuring 16 other marines.
Amid the ongoing stalemate, Lee adopted a more flexible policy on the North and appointed his close aid Yu Woo-ik as point man on cross-border relations. Unification Minister Yu has expressed his firm determination to arrange more reunions that take place regularly.
Analysts say both sides appear motivated to resume the program in a bid to help resume six-party talks that demand the North’s denuclearization in exchange for aid. Pyongyang has been calling on the international community for help to deal with ongoing food shortage and economic woes.
“The North needs food support and the South is making efforts on behalf of the separated families,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said. “If these needs are met through the reunion, it would create a positive atmosphere that could even affect the political situation such as the six-party talks.”
Many, like Jang, have grown weary of watching the political ups-and-downs and call for the both sides to quickly address urgent humanitarian needs.
“I’ve been waiting a long time,” he said. “All I want to know is whether my family is alive or not.”