SEOUL: North Korea is demolishing a venue that for decades hosted tearful reunions of families separated by the Korean War and the division of the country, Seoul said on Thursday (Feb 13), decrying the “inhumane” move.
Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950 to 1953 Korean War, which split the peninsula and separated brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives.
Hostilities ceased with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war and with all direct civilian exchanges prohibited.
Emotional reunions in the North’s Kumgang mountain served as a testament to the devastating human cost of the Korean peninsula’s division.
But the meetings were subject to the vagaries of inter-Korea politics and often used as a negotiating tool by Pyongyang. The last one was held in 2018.
“The demolition of the Mount Kumgang Reunion Center is an inhumane act that tramples on the earnest wishes of separated families,” a spokesperson for Seoul’s unification ministry said.
South Korea “sternly urges an immediate halt to such actions” and “expresses strong regret”.
“North Korea’s unilateral demolition cannot be justified under any pretext, and the North Korean authorities must bear full responsibility for this situation,” the spokesperson added.
Since 1988, around 130,000 South Koreans have registered their “separated families”.
As of 2025, around 36,000 of those individuals are still alive, according to official data.
75 percent say they do not know if their relatives are alive or dead.
A handful were lucky enough to be chosen to take part in the occasional crossborder reunions, mostly hosted at the Mount Kumgang resort.
With the reunion program effectively halted, the reality for most of the separated families is that they are unlikely to ever see each other again.
