South North
Diamond Mountain, North Korea: “A Firm Heart in the Face of Truth”?
“Only few people in the world know that Korea is divided by a big concrete wall in the Parallel 38 that was built by the United States of America when the Korean War finished.This wall is hundreds of times bigger than the one that existed in Germany and is separating the Korean families, brothers, parents… the nation is divided because the U.S.A. is dominating the southern part and keeps an army of more than 40.000 soldiers to avoid the union of the Korean people [sic]” (from the website of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).
Introduction
Kŭmgangsan, or Mount Kumgang,is a 1,638 meter high mountain in southeast North Korea, less than 50 km from the international boundary. Commonly known as Diamond Mountain, one of the meanings of Kŭmgang is “a firm heart in the face of truth.” Considering what takes place at Kŭmgangsan, the significance of its name is particularly poignant. For Kŭmgangsan, or more specifically, Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region, is the meeting place of Korean families that were torn apart by the division of their land in 1953 into two irreconcilable ideological entities, North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea).[1] Although military and other talks between the two sides have been held intermittently, especially since the 1990s, there have been numerous incursions and cross-border skirmishes over the years, mostly initiated by Pyongyang (capitol of North Korea) and tensions have escalated in recent years due to the North’s unmonitored nuclear and missile program.
Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region is a separately administered region established by North Korea in 2002 to handle South Korean tourist traffic to the mountain. South Koreans have been allowed to visit the area since 1998 and the resort was built by the South Korean government and private companies to serve this tourism; up until 2010, the site was managed jointly by both sides. Besides the family reunion center, the resort includes a hotel, golf course, fire station and duty-free shop. Originally, the tourists arrived by cruise ship but there is now a road leading there through the demilitarized zone.
Kŭmgangsan is the second highest mountain in North Korea. Known for its scenic beauty, the area around it is characterized by fantastically shaped cliffs and rocks, waterfalls, lagoons, mineral springs and Buddhist temples and hermitages.
In July 2008 South Korea suspended all trips to the resort after a tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier when she unwittingly wandered into a restricted military zone. When after some 18 months the tours had not been resumed, North Korea seized South Korean properties at the resort, and threatened to freeze others. It also stated that there would be no family reunions until the tours were renewed (although one reunion did take place in September 2009, two years after the previous one in October 2007). The reported $30 million a year generated by the tours is critical to the country’s strangled economy.[2] After protracted negotiations, and despite the sinking of a South Korean naval corvette with its crew of 46, in March, as well as a shooting incident in October 2010, North Korea agreed to allow two family reunions in October/early November 2010, but conditioned further monthly meetings on the receipt from the South of hundreds of thousands of tons of rice and fertilizer. North Korea uses the family reunions to gain economic benefits, and every time one is held such aid has been sent to Pyongyang.
Family Reunions
One of the consequences of the decades-long conflict between the two Koreas was the separation of families. Some one million Koreans were divided when the border was drawn and sealed in 1953. Hundreds of thousands had fled as refugees during the fighting and tens of thousands of others had gone south prior to the outbreak of war, desperate to find work in order to support their starving families in the north. Some South Korean soldiers and sailors were also abducted by North Korea over the years. Mail and phone communication between the citizens of the two Koreas is forbidden. Nevertheless, according to American-born Jason Kim, his grandfather, who found himself stranded after leaving his starving brothers and sisters in the north before the war to find work in the south, continued to visit the post office every day of his life in the hope of receiving a sign of life.[3]
Some lucky families have managed to unite – albeit briefly – at the Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region. Such meetings are extremely rare − fewer than 20,000 people since 2000, when a temporary agreement was reached at a landmark summit – and tend to be jeopardized or canceled in the event of an escalation in tensions between the two sides. Over 80,000 South Koreans and an unknown number of North Koreans have applied to participate in family reunions; 40,000 have since died or given up hope. The selected few are chosen mainly by lottery (in the South, at least; the selection process in the North is unknown). A few (some 550 families) have been reunited by video. For the October/early November 2010 meetings arranged by the Red Cross, over 400 South Koreans were permitted to join slightly fewer than 100 relatives from the North in the first, while 130 South Koreans were selected to unite with 200 North Korean family members in the second.[4]
The strictly supervised, controlled and videoed meetings take place over 3-6 days, at allotted times over this period, mostly in the family reunion center restaurant where they sit at numbered tables, the men in suits and the women in the traditional Korean silk hanbok dress. Many weep on each others’ shoulders but others stare into space in shock, over six decades of separation too great a bridge for them to cross. The families are not permitted to spend the night together. Many participants are in their eighties or nineties and see this as a last opportunity to meet with their loved ones before they die. The South Koreans bring with them parcels of food, medicines and underwear, goods that are desperately needed in the North. However, some approach the meetings with trepidation as they’ve heard upsetting stories about unrelated people from the North posing as long-lost family members so that they can receive the care packages the Southerners bear.
The “Big Brother” monitoring increases the awkwardness of the already uncomfortable meetings. At the October 2010 reunion, how much of the hardships she suffered in the north would 71-year-old Woo Jong-hye have divulged to her 96 year-old mother Kim Lye-jong, who last saw her when she was 10 or 11 years old? And would Kim Lye-jong want to highlight the differences between their lives by describing the relative plenty in the south? What was going on in the head of Kim Dong-yul, who left his wife and two-year-old daughter in the north in 1949, intending to return and bring them south, as the 82-year pensioner prepared to embrace his daughter, now a pensioner herself, some sixty years later. According to South Korean widow Lee Sun-ok, 80, she was ready to die without regrets after she had met her two younger sisters and a brother from the North at the September 2009 reunion of some 200 families.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8276063.stm (except from family reunion meeting at Kŭmgangsan, September 2009)
Conclusion
On November 23, 2010, in the most serious clash in decades, North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire after North Korean shells struck a South Korean island near the countries’ disputed maritime border. Two South Korean soldiers and two civilians were killed and several were injured. There was a real fear of war breaking out between the two sides. Nevertheless, two months later, South Korea announced that it had agreed to resume low-level military talks with the North. As of writing, February 2011, the talks, which also intended to pave the way for further Red Cross mediated reunions, had broken down. There may be a “firm heart” behind the reunions, but somewhere “the truth” gets lost in the politics and ideology that continue to separate the two sides.
References:
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-30/world/nkorea.skorea.reunions_1_mount-kumgang-south-koreans-north-korea?_s=PM:WORLD
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8276063.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12401126
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/for-a-few-precious-days-divided-korean-families-see-their-loved-ones-again-2120513.html#
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1596145.php/Divided-Korean-families-granted-second-round-of-reunions
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/joy-and-despair-in-korean-reunion-lotto/story-e6frg6so-1225946902337
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Rare-Intra-Korean-Family-Reunions-Underway-106368303.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/northkorea/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kŭmgangsan_Tourist_Region
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Korea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kŭmgangsan
http://wikitravel.org/en/Kumgangsan
Notes
1. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 was a proxy war and the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War. Following the end of World War II, the Americans had divided the formerly Japanese-occupied Korea at the 38th Parallel between themselves in the south and the Soviets in the north. The war involved the U.S. and United Nations troops supporting the “free” South, and the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China on the side of the communist North. The war, during which some 3 million people – both military and civilian – were killed, concluded in an armistice and has never officially ended. A three-mile buffer zone was created, known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
2. On Jun 12, 2009, the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution tightening sanctions targeting North Korea‘s nuclear and missile development programs, including encouraging United Nations members to inspect cargo vessels and airplanes suspected of carrying weapons and other military materiel (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/northkorea/index.html).
3. Personally communicated to me by Jason Kim in Tel Aviv, Israel, 2009.
4. The numbers cannot be fully verified.
About the Author
I am a graduate in Far Eastern Studies from the Australian National University. Currently, I work as an academic editor. Some of my essays are collected at http://beryl-pieces-asia.blogspot.com/.
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