Emily Kim's List: North and South Korea

• • comparison of the SK and NK pts of view

• South Korean Unification Ministry

• peace is a relative term. A physical peace
• For the Korean War split a land and separated a people. And no armistice can  remedy that ill.
• Korean civilian casualties -- dead, wounded and missing -- totaled between three  and four million during the three years of war (1950-1953).
• Many of those people assumed their flight to be a temporary measure; they fully  expected to return to their lands after the fighting ended. So many left not  just property and heirlooms, but also close relatives. In fact, this year's  government-sponsored reunions in North Korea brought together some of those  families after 50 years of exile.
• Others fled with both  immediate and extended family but then saw their family bonds breached in the  actual rush south as parents were captured or killed and children were lost or  died of starvation.
• No one knows for sure how many  families were severed because of the Korean War, but in the fall of 1999 the  world learned of one brutal incident that impacted hundreds of Korean civilians.  That year the Associated  Press told the sad saga of No  Gun Ri, where U.S.  soldiers killed hundreds of South Korean refugees, fearing that North Korean  agents had infiltrated the fleeing families.

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