Sokcho (South Korea): As the 92-year-old South Korean woman wept and stroked the wrinkled cheeks of her 71-year-old North Korean son on Monday, their first meeting since they were driven apart during the turmoil of the 1950-53 Korean War.
“How many children do you have? Do you have a son?” Lee Keum-seom asked her son Ri Sang Chol during their long-awaited encounter at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort.
The emotional reunion came after dozens of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea to meet with their relatives. The weeklong event, the first in nearly three years, was held as the rival Koreas boost reconciliation efforts amid a diplomatic push to resolve a standoff over North Korea’s drive for a nuclear weapons program.
Hugging the woman he had last seen as a child, Ri showed his mother a photo of her late husband, who had stayed behind in the North with him as a boy.
Most of the participants in the reunions are in their 70s or older and are eager to see their loved ones once more before they die. Most have had no word on whether their relatives are still alive because they are not allowed to visit each other across the border or even exchange letters, phone calls or email.
Around 90 elderly South Koreans, accompanied by their family members, will have three days of meetings with their North Korean relatives before returning to the South on Wednesday. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.
During Monday’s meeting, many elderly Koreans held each other's hands and wiped away tears with handkerchiefs while asking how their relatives had lived.
Before this week's reunions, nearly 20,000 people had participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000. Another 3,700 exchanged video messages with their North Korean relatives. None of them has had a second chance to see or talk with their relatives.
During the three years since the reunions were last held, the North tested three nuclear weapons and multiple missiles that demonstrated they potentially could strike the continental United States.
