At emotional Korean reunions, genuine talk often impossible

 

August 22, 2018



SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A mother wails as she embraces a son she hasn't seen since the 1950-53 Korean War. A woman weeps as she greets a grandfather she never got to know.

The scenes of Koreans meeting this week, likely for the last time before they die, are heartbreaking, but they often bely a highly political and tightly controlled event in which participants often struggle to have genuine conversations.

Much of the awkwardness centers on the defining fact of the Korean Peninsula: For decades it has been divided between the authoritarian North, originally backed by the Soviet Union an...



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