Reunions Bitter and Sweet in Koreas

In August, after 45 years of marriage, Ahn Young Ae learned that her North Korean-born husband had another wife and a daughter. And that wasn’t all--he wanted to see them again. On Thursday, an anxious Ahn stayed behind in Seoul as he flew to North Korea and into their open arms.

“It isn’t exactly pleasant to have him going to see her,” the 63-year-old Ahn said. “But what can I do? I take it as my fate.”

The three-day reunion of divided Korean families that started Thursday in Seoul and Pyongyang, the North’s capital, saw a flood of pent-up emotions as brothers, sisters, sons and daughters tried to recapture 50 lost years in a few hours.

Some of those emotions were painful. One of the legacies of this peninsula divided since the Korean War is the large number of married men and women who left their partners behind, remarried and started new lives, only to be forced now to confront those memories buried in the deep freeze for so long.

Ahn’s 79-year-old husband, Cho Hui Wan, tried to reassure her before he left for the North Korean capital that the visit didn’t mean anything. His earlier marriage was arranged, he explained, it only lasted a year, and he never loved the first wife anyway.

“That’s what he told me,” she said. “But the fact that he applied to go up there tells a different story, doesn’t it?”

The second wives and husbands aren’t the only ones filled with trepidation this week as all those ancient feelings get stirred up. Of the 100 South Koreans who visited Pyongyang on Thursday, 14 were men meeting their long-lost first wives. Likewise, three of the 100 North Koreans who poured into a giant hall in Seoul had come to see their abandoned wives.

“I didn’t want to come, but my son insisted,” 75-year-old Song Kum Bun, dressed in the traditional hanbok robe, said as she twisted a handkerchief nervously in her hands waiting for the arrival of her husband from the North. “I owe him big. It’s really bothered me all these years.”

Song left her first husband in North Korea because the poverty was unbearable and her in-laws were driving her crazy, she said. She then fled south, married a former North Korean who’d also left his family in the North, and tried to forget about her old life.

“We all thought he was dead,” she said--until a couple of months ago, that is, when his name suddenly appeared on a list of people hoping to visit the South.

As she finally faced him Thursday, however, she soon found out that he too had remarried and now has a son and a daughter. “Well, I’m very relieved,” she said. “It would be especially difficult if he’d lived alone all these years.”

Yoon Pil Soon, 66, has long known of her husband’s past life and even helped him pack gifts this week for the other wife, daughter, son and grandchildren living in North Korea.

For her, there’s some inevitable curiosity.

“What can I say?” she said. “They may be looking at each other right now crying their eyes out. Then again, they may be sitting there bored to tears with nothing to say.”

Any feelings of jealousy are long gone. “We are old people,” she said. “My God, he’s 83 years old! If the country were unified tomorrow and five of his wives appeared, I’d be prepared to live with all of them harmoniously.”

Chang Kyung Sup, a sociologist with Seoul National University, says flexibility and an ability to deal with social and political shock are a hallmark of the Korean family in the 20th century. As wars, famines, regimes and economic hardship have intruded on Koreans’ well-being, the family has often been one of the only places of refuge.

“People have had to survive whatever way they can,” he said. “That said, these double lives create an awkward situation.”

Many people who fled to the South after 1950 waited nearly a decade to remarry, holding out hope that they would be reunited with their loved ones. In Korea’s patriarchal society, men tended to remarry in far greater numbers than women.

Kim Pil Hwa, 69, remained single all these years after her husband was drafted into the South Korean army and never returned from the North, one of many soldiers who were captured, deserted or simply found themselves on the wrong side of the line when the fighting stopped. On Thursday, the South Korean woman finally laid eyes on 65-year-old Cho Min Ki. He has remarried and now has three sons, a daughter and eight grandchildren.

Like all the other North Koreans, he had a red pin depicting “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung prominently displayed on his lapel.

“How I have missed you!” she told him.

“Don’t cry,” he replied. “This is a happy day.”

Does he feel any remorse? “What human being would want to marry again, leaving his wife behind?” he says. “Who brought on this tragedy? It’s the American imperialists” who started the war.

South Korean resident Yu Soon Yi, 71, also chose not to remarry. She was pregnant when her husband was dragged off to fight, so until Thursday he had never met his son. Cameras zoomed in as they embraced. “I never had the chance to say the word ‘father,’ ” his 50-year-old son said. “It has been the sorrow of my life.”

Asked about his decision to have another family even as his wife toughed it out, 66-year-old Kim Joong Hyon replied, “I am proud that she demonstrated the virtue of a true Korean woman.”

Men play a dominant role in Korean society, but they are also expected to bear responsibility. During the Chosun Dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910, authorities discouraged male aristocrats from taking mistresses. But if a man was rich enough, he could take a second wife in a practice known as soshil.

In a clear double standard, it was unheard of for a woman to take a second husband. Women also were expected to keep a stiff upper lip. Jealousy, especially between wives, was considered one of the seven sins that could result in a divorce.

After World War II, soshil was outlawed. But “it hasn’t completely died out even today,” said Kim Son Poong, a professor of folklore studies at Chungang University in Seoul.

The South Koreans who are participating in this week’s reunions--the second between the two nations since August--were chosen at random. Two-thirds are men, and most are in their 70s. The North Koreans are mostly college professors or Communist Party elites. More than 90% are men, and the majority are in their 60s.

Compared with the earlier round of reunions, these meetings will go light on the tours and organized events to give family members more time to catch up on their many years apart. Even so, the visit is a study in frustration, with just 8 1/2 hours of “quality time” spread out over three days.

That may be more than enough for Song, the woman who left her husband in the North. She hadn’t looked forward to seeing him anyway.

Thursday’s meeting proved her right. “In my heart, I’m still young,” she said afterward. “But I see him, and he’s like some strange grandfather.”

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Chi Jung Nam in The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.