Inside the Two Koreas: Torn Families Hope for Reunion, Everyone Lives Under Threat of Nuclear War
This is International Review and I'm Yevgeny Primakov.
We'll talk about the most important of them with you and our guests. We'll start with both North Korea and South Korea, as they're now discussing if their Olympic teams should perform under one flag. A sudden thaw between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea is the main event of the end of the last year and the beginning of the new one, 2018.
TWO HALVES
This song is well-known both in North Korea and South Korea. It's called "Lost 30 Years." It was written 30 years after the end of the Korean War. This song also entered the Guinness Book of Records for being broadcast during 453 hours. The song is dedicated to disunited families, those who after the end of the war and the creation of the demilitarized zone remained on different sides of checkpoints and kilometers of barbed wire.
On the west of the peninsula, North Korea and South Korea are separated only by a small river, the Imjin river. But during the last 65 years, people have been able to cross this river only having received a special permission of the two countries' governments. President Moon Jae-in offered to issue such permits and hold a disunited families meeting. In South Korea, thousands of people write to the government asking to find information about sisters, brothers, and children whom they haven't seen in decades.
Ko Hae-sook, an NGO representative: "We don't know the exact number of such families. After the war, around 10 million people couldn't find their relatives. But time passes by. We can't say how many of them are alive now. I have relatives in North Korea myself".
Twice a year, South Koreans whose relatives remained on the other side of the 38th parallel come here. This is the memorial complex at the end of the demilitarized zone. This is a tribute to the memory of those who might be long dead and those who live just several kilometers from here and have been waiting for a meeting all those years.
Koreans come to the monument on the Chinese New Year and local Thanksgiving. They turn to North Korea, bow and perform an ancestor remembrance ritual.
Kim Woo-in, local resident: "An old man comes here very often. His older brother stayed in North Korea. He comes here and looks there. We need the disunited families meetings very much. Time passes, people don't get younger. They need to try to meet while people are still alive".
The first disunited families meeting took place in 2000 after the first inter-Korean summit. The last one was in 2015. Many of those who came to North Korea back then, were older than 60. Some people were older than 90.
69-years-old Kim Jong-pil met his mother. Her son was seven years old when she last saw him. People have approximately four days for such meetings. Some of them try not to sleep during such days.
Out of 76,000 South Koreans who wanted to meet with their relatives in the North in 2000 only 100 people were selected. In the next 15 years, another 20,000 people could see their families.
Darya Kozlova, Ivan Ponomarenko, especially for International Review, Seoul.
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Technically, North Korea and South Korea are still in the state of war, as there's only a ceasefire agreement of 1953. From one side, it was signed by the military command of China and the DPRK, and the US from the other side under the UN flag. The US is and has always been the security guarantor for South Korea, which is also called the Republic of Korea.
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After the end of the war, the countries' first joint statement was signed only in July 1972. Those were the main reunification principles. Independently, without relying on external forces, peacefully, according to the great national consolidation, using the formula "one nation, two systems, two governments." In the 90s, the contacts continued, but the first inter-Korean summit took place in Pyongyang in July 2000 when Kim Jong-il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung signed the North-South Joint Declaration. Now, it's being considered the main document in the matter of reunification.
Relations worsened dramatically in 2008 when Lee Myung-bak became the president of South Korea. He refused to cooperate until the nuclear problem was settled. Pyongyang continued the confrontation. In March 2013, as an answer to the UN Security Council resolution which condemned underground nuclear tests, Kim Jong-un declared the breaking of all non-aggression pacts with South Korea. Only in the beginning of this year, Pyongyang started normalizing the relationship. January 3, a special connection line in the border village of Panmunjom was restored.
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Since the beginning of this year, North Korean television and officials started called the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, as president. The term is very important, as he used to be called exclusively as an American puppet, which indirectly confirms North Korea's determination to continue the talks. By the way, we often talk about the North Korean regime being tough while dealing with nonconformity, and so on, and so forth.
At the same time, South Korea has one of the most strict anti-communist repressive legislations which is often overlooked. It's formally called the National Security Act of the Republic of Korea. It strictly prohibits travels to the DPRK and any contacts with the North Korean authorities. When Lee Myung-bak was president, it was under him that the last worsening of the relations took place, we talked about him in the reference report, the number of repressions reached hundreds. This is the most famous story.
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In July 2013, in the demilitarized zone, there was a shocking scene. South Korean citizen Ro Soo-hee, Vice-President of the Union for the Reunification of the Fatherland, was coming back from the DPRK, having attended a ceremony devoted to 100 days since Kim Jong-il's death. Before crossing the border with South Korea, he said: "Hurray to the reunification of the two countries!" Hardly did he cross the border that he was arrested and taken away.
The Seoul Central District Court sentenced him to four years in prison and deprived him of civil rights for four years. This was for visiting Pyongyang without the government's permission and for glorifying the enemy. Obviously, the activist did everything to be arrested on the border. He was 68 years old and was said to be sick with cancer. But it could hardly provoke sympathy. The Union for the Reunification of the Fatherland Secretary-General was sentenced to three years in prison by the same court for organizing the trip. Ro Soo-hee was liberated in 2016.
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International review welcomes a political scientist and the Foreign Policy Agency head, Andrei Sushentsov.
- Hello! Can we say that the Korean crisis is considered settled? Or is it too early?
- I think saying so is very preliminary. We're following the news and considering the possibilities. There's a possibility of a military scenario. The US has at least several military conflict plans. The scenario can be of a preventive military strike. And taking into account the fact that President Trump has, let's say, very little options of the Korean crisis settlement, as he's markedly influenced by the national security advisor McMaster, who's the author of those two basic statements about the time running out and the impossibility to contain the North Korean maniac leader. This narrows down the space for a maneuver.
- As they used to be called in the good old International Panorama, the "Washington hawks". How skillfully did Pyongyang, as it seems to us, outmaneuver the US? After Pyongyang declared their readiness to hold talks, to meet, and so on, and so forth, leaving aside specifically the nuclear component, how much did it complicate the rhetoric for the Americans? Having long insisted that the North Korea's nuclear status is unacceptable for them, in the conditions of the ongoing contacts and talks, how much more difficult will it be for them now to bang the table with their fist?
- I think it'll be particularly difficult in this situation. The North Korean position is that they want to provoke a direct dialog with the US resulting in the recognition of the DPRK's nuclear status and the recognition of its regime.
- Now, they're comparing the sizes of their buttons.
- The red nuclear buttons.
- It was a fantastic story that the whole American press certainly laughed about. First, the North Korean leader said he had the red button at hand and then Trump said that his was bigger and worked better. It almost had some pornographic context.