Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH<BR> Family reunions: too little, too late


	December 7, 2000	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Family reunions: too little, too late
By Aidan Foster-Carter

"You've got a perm. I don't like it." A husband who even notices that his wife changed her hairstyle gets a brownie point - only to lose it straight away by his follow-up. She flushes with embarrassment.

Yet we can forgive Hong Tae-jung for not knowing quite what to say. Her hair wasn't the only thing that had changed about Pak Son-bi. Half a century had passed since they last met. When the Korean War broke out, he fled south to avoid being drafted. There he remarried. She didn't, staying in North Korea to raise their three children. One son, now 54, also met his dad for the first time since he was 4.

Just one aching vignette from the latest round of inter-Korean family reunions, held last week - the second this year, and only the third ever in the peninsula's 55 years of division (the first, a one-off, was in 1985). As in August, two planeloads of 100 mostly elderly men and women flew from Pyongyang to Seoul and vice versa, to meet close kin with whom they'd had zero contact for half a century.

Tears flowed. Hands were held, for a long time. Intrusive cameras replayed these poignant intimacies for TV in South Korea and around the world - to less attention than before, it being in media terms a repeat performance. Not for the participants: a lucky few, whose one and only chance this may well be to catch up on the lives together they were denied.

Then, after just three days - a day less than last time, to save money for the two governments that kept them apart all these years - it was more tears, of farewell. That's as in adieu, not au revoir. Not only may they not see each other ever again, but there's no guarantee they can even write, much less phone. Northern and Southern Red Crosses are discussing all that, but nothing is yet agreed.

Another difference from last time was that gifts were limited to a US$500 maximum - to the dismay of the southerners, many of whom came loaded with cash, jewelry, fur coats for the cruel Northern winter, and even computers. As ever, raison d'etat trumped family feeling. No doubt it's too embarrassing for Kim Jong-il's cohorts to have Southern wealth versus Northern penury so starkly displayed.

The difference also shows in who got to go. As last time, North Korea sent trusted cadres: southern communists who'd gone north after 1945, largely. By contrast, South Korea did it democratically. This lucky 100, like the previous set, were chosen by ballot from more than 70,000 applicants. So, do the math. Two reunions in three months; 200 out of 70,000. At this rate, for all who applied to get to meet their kin would take almost 200 years. Most of them are already over 70. Kim Jong-il had promised monthly meetings, but hasn't delivered so far - and even that would be way too slow.

If inter-Korean family reunions are ever to go beyond such minimal moments, carefully controlled, it has to be different from this. So far the mood in Seoul is still to be grateful for small mercies. But as the novelty wears off, there will be demands for something more substantial. People will want to be able to write or phone (as West and East Germans used to, despite the Wall); to visit hometowns and ancestral graves, not just anonymous hotels; and to build or rebuild real relationships over time.

Will they get that chance? It's not impossible. For Pyongyang, the risks inherent in any opening have to be balanced against the potential gains. Southern families may be a rude reminder of which system works. But they can also be cash cows - and it's not like North Korea to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Separately from these official reunions, some South Koreans are making their own arrangements via middlemen - often ethnic Koreans in China. The trailblazers here were Koreans in the US, who for over a decade have been free to contact North Korea. For them, as now for South Koreans, $10,000 and up buys a chance to meet relatives just across the border in China.

While the legal status of this is (perhaps deliberately) unclear, some Northern officials connive at it - presumably for a percentage. In a few cases, Southern families have found ways to send money North: there's even a bank in Seoul which offers this service. On the receiving end, having relatives in the South - hitherto something to keep very quiet about - may suddenly become a marketable asset.

The cash cow approach has long been applied to another group. Pro-North Koreans in Japan have to cough up endlessly, both to Pyongyang and to their kin who in the 1950s were unwise enough to head home to build socialism. In a further twist, most are of Southern origin - yet were banned from South Korea until recently. Now they can visit, with the blessing of both governments; and can go wherever they like. It may be a long time yet before South and North Koreans at home get that lucky.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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