Aftermath of a Breakthrough

“Wait here. I’ll come right back and get you,” Shim Myong Shik told his parents on the terrifying afternoon of Dec. 5, 1950. He never saw them again.

The North Korean and Chinese armies were beating U.S. forces back down the Korean peninsula, and thousands of people were fleeing the Northern port city of Nampo. U.S. ships had been sent to evacuate some residents. But thousands of panicked refugees, including Shim’s parents and their seven children, pushed against a barbed-wire fence whose narrow gate was manned by two American guards who were there to keep the mob from swamping the ship.

A friend showed Shim a back way through the fence. The 18-year-old Shim promised to come back to the gate from inside and help his family through. But he couldn’t fight his way through the stampede. As the ship pulled out at 5 p.m., the Americans began bombing the port, where he feared that his family was still waiting.

“I began to cry. You cannot imagine the sorrow,” Shim, 68, said this week, his voice choking as he relived the memories. “It was too late to jump into the sea.”

Fifty years have passed without a letter, phone call, postcard from the Red Cross or even third-hand news of his family. Shim doesn’t even know if his parents are alive.

Now, Shim and more than 1 million other South Koreans who have suffered similar tragedies may at last find out about family members in the North.

Under a landmark agreement signed Wednesday between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, visits between members of an unspecified number of families torn asunder by the Korean War will be held around Aug. 15, the anniversary of the 1945 liberation from Japanese rule.

Kim Dae Jung said he again raised the issue of separated families with Kim Jong Il on Thursday at the end of their historic summit, urging the North Korean leader to show the world a grand goodwill gesture and allow Red Cross contacts to begin immediately. The North Korean leader agreed, Kim said.

“The number of families to exchange visits will be considerable, although I cannot now disclose how big,” the Southern leader said Thursday upon returning to Seoul.

Shim stayed up watching television footage of the two Kims signing the deal late Wednesday in the Northern capital, Pyongyang.

“I’m overwhelmed,” he said Thursday. “Of course I will go. Even if I’m not allowed to visit my hometown, it’s enough just to confirm that they are alive.”

For years, Shim’s father came to him in dreams, so the son chose to believe that his parents were still alive. Then the dreams stopped, so Shim believes that his father probably has passed away. His father would now be older than 100, his mother 95, his older brother 73. Still, he longs to see his five younger siblings.

On New Year’s Day and on Chusok, the day of thanksgiving when Koreans honor their dead, Shim puts out a bowl of rice for his parents. Tradition requires that a son bow twice to deceased parents, but until he has news to the contrary, Shim insists on bowing only once.

“I pray, ‘Please be healthy and live until I can fulfill my duty as a son. Please stay alive until I can see you,’ ” he said.

“This ritual is the very lifeline of Koreans,” Shim explained. “It is our tradition. If you do not do this, you neglect your filial duty, and that automatically makes you a bad son. . . . Now, my only hope is to have news of when my parent passed away, so that I can prepare the ritual properly.”

Shim graduated from high school in Nampo under North Korean rule and evaded military service. He was caught and imprisoned, but because he was small for his age, he was excused from conscription.

While he was held at the police station, Shim saw other draft dodgers hacked to death with an ax. In a corner of the prison was a pile of bodies wrapped in a woven mat.

Earlier that year, as American troops pushed north past Nampo toward the Chinese border, retreating Northern soldiers set fire to the city’s prison. Shim went to the prison and saw charred bodies of inmates still chained to the walls and more bodies of those who had jumped into the latrine to try to escape the flames.

Then China entered the war, and its troops drove the Americans back down the peninsula.

Shim’s elder brother had deserted the North Korean army. When it became clear that the Americans would lose Nampo, the family decided to flee.

“We knew we would be caught someday, and when we were caught, we would be axed,” Shim said. “The Communists were worse than the Japanese.”

The refugee ship dropped Shim off in Pusan. He was dragooned into the South Korean army and, after the war, started his own construction company in Seoul. He worked his way into the burgeoning middle class and sent his three children to university.

But he was homesick. In 1975, Shim arranged a rare visit to the demilitarized zone, when few tourists were allowed there. Walking near the cement strip that divides North from South, Shim realized that if he stepped over the line, the Southern guards could not catch him.

“I was sorely tempted,” he said. “If I had not been married with children, I would have done it. . . . If I were there now, I would not hesitate to take that one step north.”

In 1985, 100 people from North and South Korea were selected to exchange brief visits in Seoul and Pyongyang. Shim managed to be the first South Korean to apply and was informed that he could take part in the second round of exchanges. But after the first round of tearful reunions, North Korea slammed the door.

A few years ago, Shim accompanied members of other separated families to China, hoping to hear word of his own kin from the North Koreans who had begun pouring across the border in search of food.

“To get news, you have to pay $3,000,” Shim explained. “To arrange a meeting with your family in China costs $5,000. If you want to visit them in North Korea, it’s $10,000. If it were foolproof, I would be prepared to pay.”

But too many South Korean families had been cheated by the underground network of brokers, Shim said.

Instead, he has been learning how to use the Internet, in hopes of eventually tracing his family through Northern Web sites. But Thursday, he hoped that he wouldn’t need to.

“You can bet that I will be at the front of the line to apply,” he said.