korean unification studies

Choe Sang-Hun at the International Herald Tribune has written a tear-jerking story that really brings out the human cost of a divided peninsula. The article leaves a person with only one thought… this is so f&%^d up!

I strongly recommend you read the article here. It describes the plight of a 70 year old German, Renate, who married a North Korean in the days of East German-DPRK socialist solidarity only to have her husband taken away by the North Korean government which feared further defections. She received a letter from the North Korean Government at a later date telling her to please understand that North Korea needed every one of its citizens to build the country… try telling that to her two children who grew up without their dad.

If you are able to empathize with poor Renate, think of the Korean peninsila’s ten million divided families!!!

Note: There is no exact statistic for the number of divided families on the Korean peninsula. ‘Ten million’ or chonman kajok was a popularly used expression, but is imprecise whether it literally means ‘ten million’ or is a colloquial understanding of ‘very many’ or ‘countless’. This was studied by James A. Foley in an academic article (also a good read) ”Ten million families: Statistic or metaphor?”, Korean Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2001. Foley considered that the ‘ten million’ figures was derived from early propaganda on both sides of the divide. He further considers the most reliable estimate of surviving first generation divided family members is today around 750,000. However, he notes that each displaced person also has a family on the other side.