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A GROUP OF 82 elderly and frail South Koreans held an emotional reunion with family members in North Korea today, more than 60 years after they were separated by the Korean War.
The first North-South family reunion for more than three years began around 3pm (6am GMT) with a mass gathering in the main hall of a resort on North Korea’s Mount Kumgang, a Unification Ministry official said in Seoul.
The event was the result of tortuous, high-level negotiations between Pyongyang and Seoul, which nearly broke down over the North’s objections to overlapping joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.
The South Korean group and the 180 North Korean relatives who have come to meet them were all scheduled to dine together, with more private reunions planned for Friday.
Officials in Seoul revealed today that among the North Korean relatives were two fishermen who had been kidnapped by the North in the 1970s.
Hope and fears
The South Korean group, with an average age of 84, had left the eastern port city of Sokcho at 8:30am on board 10 buses, with half a dozen police vehicles as escorts.
South Korean Lee Son-hyang (88) and her brother Lee Yoon Geun (72) of North Korea as they are reunited.
The departure was delayed as two female members of the group needed medical attention, and ended up being placed into ambulances for the journey.
More than a dozen were in wheelchairs and needed help boarding the buses, which they shared with 58 family members, brought along for physical as well as emotional support.
After crossing the heavily militarised border, they arrived at the reunion venue where a brief lunch was followed by the first sight in six decades of their long-separated relatives.
Before boarding the buses in Sokcho, some spoke of their hopes and anxieties ahead of the meetings they had dreamed of for so long.
Buses carrying the South Koreans across the border. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Lee Jong-geun)
“I think when I see her face, I won’t believe it’s real,” Kim Dong-Bin, 81, said of the elder sister he left decades ago in Pyongyang.
I wonder if I will be able to recognise her immediately? It’s been so long.
All carried bags stuffed with gifts, ranging from basic medicines to framed family photos and packets of instant noodles.
Some brought bags of fresh fruit which they planned to offer in a joint prayer ceremony with their reunited siblings to their late parents.
“The gifts I’m bringing to my sister should be good. Something you can’t see much in North Korea so I hope she will be happy,” said Kim Se-Rin, 85.
“I’ve also included some US dollars for her and my younger brother,” Kim said.
Final farewell
Millions of Koreans were separated by the 1950-53 war, and the vast majority have since died without having any communication at all with surviving relatives.
Because the conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, the two Koreas technically remain at war and direct exchanges of letters or telephone calls are banned.
(AP Photo/Yonhap, Lee Jong-geun)
The reunion programme began in earnest after a historic North-South summit in 2000, but the waiting list has always been far larger than the numbers that could be accommodated.
For many people, time simply ran out. Last year alone 3,800 South Korean applicants for reunions died without ever seeing their relatives.
For all the joy the reunion brings, it is tempered by the realisation that — given the participants’ advanced ages — it also marks a final farewell.
“This will be our first and last reunion,” Kim Dong-Bin acknowledged, shaking his head.
Etiquette
All the South Korean participants had spent the night in a Sokcho hotel, where they were given an “orientation” course by South Korean officials listing a series of dos and don’ts for their stay in Mount Kumgang.
“They were basically telling people not to discuss any political issues and not to be swayed by North Korean propaganda,” said Kim’s wife, Shin Myung-Soon.
The Kumgang event will be the first reunion since the programme was suspended following the North’s shelling of a South Korean border island in 2010.
A reunion had been planned at the same venue for last September, but was cancelled at the last minute by the North.
The emotional meetings with the 180 North Korean relatives will last until Saturday, after which the South Korean group will return home.
Then a selected group of 88 North Koreans will travel to Mount Kumgang to meet 361 of their relatives from the South from Sunday to Tuesday.
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I think it’s a disgrace the way elderly people are treated by the government
I think Irish people are also very quick to blame others assuming that it has all responsibility to provide all care for their relatives. We see a lot of old people who could make it home with a bit more support from their families but instead they are left to go into care because of lack of support. Blaming it on ‘the Government’ alone is a cop out.
Agreed!. There were no nursing homes back in the day (I hate that cliche !). Kids grew up with their grannies and granddad around them and they learned from them.Now the grandparents are almost disposable when they are less productive.
I agree that old people are treated dreadfully in this day and age, we had to put my grandmother into a nursing home earlier this year, we all work full time with kids, my uncles the same, people can’t commit to looking after their an elderly person full time, not because they don’t want to but because it’s not feasible!!! In an ideal world we would, but unfortunately with things so tight nowadays people have to work, and when an elderly person is falling a lot and needs full time care there are no other options!
Frances
Who would you like to pay for unlimited access to Nursing Home care. Please don’t trot out the usual Left Wing drivel that the elderly have paid taxes all of their lives. They may have but they certainly haven’t paid one tiny fraction of the costs associated with this new wave of ” elderly management ” as I like to call it.
The average cost of a Nursing Home is somewhere in the region of fifty thousand Euro a year and the average private pension is somewhere in the region of twenty eight thousand Euro a year. Below that figure the principal form of income is the State funded contributory and non contributory pension that wouldn’t cover your meals in a Facility for the aged!
Another real issue is the fact that Nursing Homes run by the State cost some fifty percent more to fund when compared to private facilities and I think we can all agree that in the vast majority of cases the quality and standards of these would substantially favour the latter.
Perhaps you could let us have an answer to my opening question Frances.
Donie, so true. I worked with people from many overseas countries and they were all surprised by this whole concept of nursing homes. Yes some elderly can only be cared for in a nursing home but like many, I too remember as a child my granny and great aunt living with us until their final days. That is the norm in many other countries. Not so anymore. While these delays are awful, it is terrible that I can confidently say that all hospital staff are familiar with the term granny dumping. It is often sad when remembering the sacrifices that parents make for their children, that often the same is not returned when the parents themselves need support.
I think Irish people are also very quick to blame others assuming that it has all responsibility to provide all care for their relatives. We see a lot of old people who could make it home with a bit more support from their families but instead they are left to go into care because of lack of support. Blaming it on âthe Governmentâ alone is a cop out. by home nursing in Bangalore
Agreed!. There were no nursing homes back in the day (I hate that cliche !). Kids grew up with their grannies and granddad around them and they learned from them.Now the grandparents are almost disposable when they are less productive. by home nursing in Bangalore
share this with ten people and try to be a life saver….GOD
gofund.me/Elliotyeswecan
The elderly are the people who have contributed most to our miserable country, and this is the way they are treated. Other people abuse the system and benefit most… What a joke, just makes me angry.
It’s not a nice thing to say, but I’d do myself in before I left myself at the mercy of the Irish state.
Yes, feel the same way. Dreading old age if this is how things are going to happen..
The figures hide the scale of the suffering and the waste of public resources.
Where will older people waiting for a nursing home bed for 12-14 weeks wait? All have been deemed in need of full-time nursing care. Those at home will grow progressively frailer and many will be admitted by their GPs to their local A&E and into an acute hospital bed. Not only do they not need acute hospital care (just nursing care) they will deprive others in need of acute care of a bed. This is a problem — not just for older people who may need a nursing home bed — but for everyone who may need an acute hospital bed.
At the core of the problem is the failure of successive governments to plan for our ageing population. This does not just mean funding for nursing home beds, but also includes a much greater investment in community-based care. Supports such as home helps, home care packages, public health nurses, occupational therapists, day care centres, meals on wheels etc can enable more older people to live for longer in their own homes. Likewise, proper funding for home adaptation schemes would be a great help (funding for the scheme has been slashed this year).
The current problem was clear from late last year when the HSE published its service plan. This is our statement issued on December 18, 2013 http://www.ageaction.ie/age-action-concerned-impact-hse-service-plan-sickest-older-people
http://www.ageaction.ie/age-action-concerned-impact-hse-service-plan-sickest-older-people
Whilst the pressure being placed on our already burdened health service is of grave concern, the worst part about this delay is the effect it has on the quality of life of these older people stuck in acute hospitals!
Due to understaffing and over-crowding, many of these patients spend the vast majority of their days in bed or sitting in a chair with the consequence being that by the time they are placed in a nursing home they can no longer walk and have become incontinent. The real tragedy of this 4 month delay is the physical and psychological toll which this delay takes on our loved ones. We should not simply abide this!
The Government does not care about elderly people, they only cost money, no profit in them. Let the private sector look after them or let the people set up a charity ……Our caring government.
Better off not going all the abuse that they get in them places. A place in Galway had a sweat shop for knitting Aran sweaters. By they time the operation was uncovered bone had already been exposed through the tops of the oaps fingers. Enough is enough
This is just sad and alarming too because the government allows this to happen to older adults. They should be taken good care of and not taken for granted. I hope the government will do something about this and will release the funds right on time and to provide more nursing homes in order to accommodate those who are in need of care. This should be addressed right away since http://www.longtermcare.gov and http://www.ltcoptions.com confirm that around 7 out of 10 of people who are 65 and above will require long term care. To make things worse, there will be a silver tsunami soon and more people will require care inside nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. If the government can’t do it alone, then perhaps its time to create a partnership with private groups or charities that can solve this problem. I really hope the government will put this in its priority list or else a lot of older adults will suffer physically, financially and emotionally as well.
I agree with Michael Nahyan, it’s disgusting they way, they treat are elderly, and why it has to cost so much to look after the elderly is beyond me. , I really feel for them.
I realise it’s important to find nee things to be engraged about, but the waiting-time for one of these places is a non-starter. Nobody suddenly wakes up one day and finds themselves old and unable to care for themselves. It happens over time. There’s plenty of t
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