South Korean Families Get Ready for Family Reunions in North Korea
I guess we will see if the Kim regime manufactures a reason to cancel these reunions at the last minute, but it appears these reunions are pretty much set to happen this time:
South Korean families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War gathered at a resort on the country’s east coast Monday to prepare for reunions with their North Korean relatives later this week, officials said.
The first batch of the nearly 400 South Koreans, part of 96 families, stopped in the city of Sokcho on their way to the scenic resort on Mount Kumgang for the reunions with their family members in North Korea from Tuesday to Thursday.
The upcoming event, the first since February 2014, is the result of the deal South and North Korea reached in August to defuse military tension and resume the family reunions.
The second round of the reunions involving some 250 South Koreans, part of 90 families, will be held from Saturday to next Monday at the North Korean resort, which is about a half-hour drive from Sokcho. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
While I am certainly glad for the family members who will get to see each other after all these years, I still find the whole situation to be surreal. Here we are in the 21st century, and we have a government deciding if, when, where, and for how long these family members are allowed to visit each other. Our news media seem to be focused on the tragedy of ancient religious antiquities being demolished by ISIS in the Middle East, but we don’t get to see much of the real human tragedy that occurs in North Korea every day.