A medical worker takes a sample from a senior citizen for a DNA test at Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul, Sept. 27, on the occasion of the newly designated Day of Separated Families during the Korean War. Some 10 million Koreans became separated as a result of the 1950-53 conflict between the two Koreas. Yonhap
More than 2,200 South Koreans died in the first eight months of this year without having a chance to reunite with their family members in North Korea after being separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, government data showed Thursday.
A total of 2,226 people passed away in the January-August period among around 133,700 applicants who had registered with the government for family reunion events, according to the data from the unification ministry.
The number of surviving people came to 40,408 as of the end of August, with 67 percent of the total aged 80 or older, according to the data.
State-arranged family reunion events have been suspended amid frosty inter-Korean relations. Since the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, the two Koreas have held 21 face-to-face family reunions, including the last one in August 2018.
The government held a ceremony to mark Separated Families Day on Wednesday for the first time, since a law designating the 13th day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar as a commemorative day for divided families went into effect earlier this year.
The date was selected to reflect separated families' wishes, as many of them want to reunite with their relatives in the North on the occasion of the Chuseok fall harvest holiday, which falls on the 15th day of the same month on the lunar calendar and is one of the country's two biggest traditional holidays.
On the eve of the Chuseok holiday in September 2022, then Unification Minister Kwon Young-se proposed talks with North Korea to discuss the issue of families torn apart by the war. But Pyongyang has not responded to Seoul's offer.
The two Koreas remain technically at war, as the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)
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