Draft The Finding Dispersed Families Campaign
| Title | Healing the Tragedy of Separated Families |
|---|---|
| Author | 이지선 |
1차 원고
After the end of World War II, Korea was divided into South and North, and then went through the Korean War that caused 3 million casualties between 1950 and 1953. In 1945, along the 38th parallel line (38 referring to 38 degrees north latitude), the armed forces of the United States and the Soviet Union occupied the South and the North respectively, turning the Korean Peninsula into a stark example of cold-war confrontation. When a communist regime took power in the North, millions of people fled their homes and came down to the South seeking for freedom. Many of those who hadn’t ventured out yet came to South Korea when the U.N. troops advanced in North Korea during the Korean War.
In such migration process, approximately 10 million Korean people were forced to separate from their families. While some families were split physically by the 38th parallel line between South and North Korea, some failed to join other family members on their ways southward.
Since then, South and North Korean people had long lived separately with no available routes for traffic, communications, and human and material exchange. Although many parts of the world were painfully affected by the Cold War, complete segregation like this was hardly to be found anywhere else outside the Korean Peninsula. The older those dispersed families grew over time, the more they missed their hometowns and loved ones. However, there was practically no way for them to reunite under the Cold War system.
Many of those who came from northern regions during the Korean War lost contact with their families and friends. Many wished if only they could find their relatives who had come to the south too. Even though they were not allowed to anticipate reunion with their kin that they had left behind in the North, many were desperate to find their family members living in the same territory of the South.
To fulfill their wishes, there had been occasional efforts in newspapers and on radio for reuniting dispersed families, which made insignificant results.
In 1983, the state-run Korea Broadcasting System launched a special live program titled ‘Finding Dispersed Families’ using its national TV network to mark the 30th anniversary of the armistice agreement. In any part of the world, there had been no broadcast campaign of such scale for helping reunite war-scattered families. The primary purpose of this live program was to facilitate reunions among dispersed families living in South Korea.
This program was first aired at 10 pm on June 30 and lasted much longer than initially scheduled through 4 am on November 14. Through this marathon TV campaign that ran for 138 days, 453 hours of airtime, 100,000 or more applications were received, among which about 50,000 cases were introduced in the program, and 10,189 cases were resolved.
Presenting deeply moving stories every day, ‘Finding Dispersed Families’ gained enthusiastic response from the public across the country and recorded high viewer ratings. All over the country, South Korean people gathered in front of TV sets to watch touching ceremonies of verification and reunion, and shared their heartbreaking tears and happy tears alike.
While the live program was on air, the Yoido area where the KBS flagship station of Seoul was located, was crowded with people holding placards. On the placard was written the person’s name, usually the name of the person being sought, and identifying details such as scars or the circumstances of their last moments together. From the day 3 of the program, volunteers came to provide dispersed families with guiding, medical service and writing applications on behalf of them. Besides, a huge number of individual citizens and companies sponsored them by offering a wide range of items including TV sets, public phones, movable toilets, train tickets, bottled water, bread, ramen, hand fans towels, and so on. While dispersed families were waiting in TV stations for their cases to be resolved through the program, companies hiring those applicants granted special leave.
With keen interest, foreign press too covered the stories created from this live campaign. The pressroom arranged in the central hall of the KBS main station was packed with journalists coming from 25 countries to report the scene of families being newly reunited on a real-time basis. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) did live coverage on such families in its renowned news program, ‘Nightline’.
The KBS Special Live program ‘Finding Dispersed Families’ served as a vivid reminder of scars left by the Cold War regime not only to Korean viewers but to foreign audiences around the world. The program also played an important role in highlighting dispersed families in South and North Korea as a major international issue. During the televising period of the program, president of the Korean Red Cross released a statement to urge that North Korea should not delay resolving the issue of 10 million dispersed families and that it agree on resumption of the South-North Red Cross talks.
In his commemorative remarks on Korea’s Liberation Day in August 1983, South Korean President Chon Du-hwan asked for North Korea to cooperate in the efforts to reunite dispersed families, saying that even though South Korea and North Korea advocated different ideologies and systems, the resolution of this issue should not be postponed any longer.
When President Reagan of the United States visited to South Korea’s National Assembly in November 1983, he called for North Korean cooperation mentioning the impressive outcome of the KBS special campaign in his speech
As a consequence, two years after the program was aired, the North Korean delegation visited the KBS headquarters during their visit to Seoul in May 1985, leading to groundbreaking first reunion event between dispersed families living in the South and the North in September 1985.
From then to 2014, through the intermediation of the Red Cross, 18,523 Koreans met in person their long-separated relatives.
감수본
Healing the Tragedy of Separated Families
After the end of World War II in August 1945, the armed forces of the United States and the Soviet Union occupied the southern and the northern halves of the Korean Peninsula respectively, dividing Korea along the 38th north latitude parallel line, turning it into a stark example of cold-war confrontation. The Korean War then caused 3 million casualties between 1950 and 1953, and further divided the population. While some families were physically split by the 38th parallel line between South and North Korea, many failed to join other family members on their ways south or north as refugees, or were forced apart by one of the armies.
Many of those who escaped from northern regions during the war lost contact with, and now wished only to find, their relatives who had also come to the south, even though they were not allowed to even anticipate reunion with their kin that they had left behind in the North.
In 1983, the state-run Korea Broadcasting System launched a special live program entitled “Finding Dispersed Families” using its national TV network to mark the 30th anniversary of the armistice agreement. It was first aired at 10 pm on June 30 and lasted for 138 days, using 453 hours of airtime. More than 100,000 applications were received, among which about 50,000 cases were introduced in the program, and 10,189 cases were resolved.
All over the country, people gathered in front of TV sets to watch touching rituals of verification and reunion, and shared their heartbroken tears and joyful tears alike.
The foreign press also covered the stories created from this live campaign with keen interest. Journalists from 25 countries reported the scene of families being reunited on a real-time basis. America’s ABC-TV broadcast live coverage on such families in its renowned ‘Nightline’ news program. This highlighted dispersed Korean families as major international issue and vivid reminder of scars left by the Cold War system.
A North Korean delegation visited the KBS headquarters during their visit to Seoul in May 1985, leading to the groundbreaking first reunion event between dispersed families living in the South and the North in September 1985.
Since then 18,523 Koreans met their long-separated relatives in-person as of 2014, through the intermediation of the Red Cross. Many Koreans wait for the day of unification when a family would never be separated again.
