Tears streamed down the wrinkled face of Cho Jeong-gi as the 67-year-old South Korean met the North Korean father he has never seen.
“I am your first son, first son,” Cho said in a trembling voice. “I had no idea I would be able to meet you.”
Cho was among hundreds of people from the two Koreas who were reunited with their families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War at the North’s eastern resort of Mount Kumgang on Friday, reported Joint Press Corps-Yonhap
His 88-year-old father, Deok-yong, moved to the North alone during the war, before Jeong-gi was born. His mother passed away earlier this year before she could be notified of the event.
A total of 326 South Koreans from 81 families met their long-lost kin during the second round of the meeting.
As with the first round of reunions that ended on Wednesday, this one was filled with tears, sigh and screams of joy in yet another emotional reminder of the tragic division of the peninsula.
“I thank you for being alive,” Woo Gi-ju, 79, from the South, said fighting back tears as she met her 86-year-old sister, Gi-bok, who was in a wheelchair. The elder Woo had left her after saying she would go to seek an education.