Relatives from family separated by Korean War meet for 1st time in 3rd country
Two relatives from a family separated by the 1950-53 Korean War met for the first time in a third country in September, marking a rare reunion amid frozen inter-Korean relations. Tensions remain high on the divided Korean Peninsula as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ruled out talks with South Korea and defined inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other." The meeting…
In September, two family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War reunited for the first time in a third country, a rare occurrence considering the frozen inter-Korean relations. Despite the high tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula, where North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has rejected negotiations with South Korea, describing the ties between the two nations as hostile state relations, this meeting occurred.
The reunion came five months after South Korea's Unification Ministry received a request from a North Korean family member seeking assistance to locate a maternal uncle in South Korea. This request was forwarded to the ministry by a North Korean defector residing in the South. The Unification Ministry, responsible for inter-Korean affairs, identified the uncle in its database of separated families.
However, they discovered that the uncle had passed away 30 years earlier. Following this, a ministry official utilized the database to locate the adult children of the uncle and reached out to a 65-year-old cousin residing in Gyeonggi Province, near Seoul. The South Korean cousin promptly agreed to facilitate communication with the North Korean relative, expressing their willingness to connect due to the cousin's empathy.
Written by urgent.news from The Korea Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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