한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부, 60년 만에 재회 '감동'

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한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부, 60년 만에 재회 '감동' [이투데이] 입력 2013.07.29 09:39    60년 만에 재회한 노부부   한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부가 극적으로 상봉한 사실이 알려져 감동을 주고 있다. 미국 CNN은 지난 25일(현지시간) 이순상(89)씨와 이씨의 아내 김은해씨가 전날 60여 년 만에 극적으로 상봉했다고 보도했다. 60년 만에 재회한 노부부는 결혼 직후 한국전쟁이 벌어져 생이별을 겪어야만 했다. 남편 이씨에게 정집 집행 명령이 떨어졌고 전쟁이 끝나지 않은 1953년 북한군에 포로로 끌려간 뒤 곧바로 휴전이 선포됐다.   이후 이씨는 3년 6개월 가량 북한 포로수용소에서 지냈고 이후 아오지 광산으로 보내진 것으로 전해졌다. 이씨는 북한에서 만난 한 여성과 재혼해 아이도 낳았지만 고향과 아내에 대한 그리움을 떨쳐버릴 수는 없었다.   이씨는 결국 북한에서 탈북을 시도했고 무사히 중국 땅을 밟았다. 이후 브로커 등을 수소문해 2004년 8월 김씨의 연락처를 입수했고 50년 만에 한국의 부인에게 전화를 걸었다.   아내 김씨는 처음 몇 년간은 사기전화로 착각해 전화를 받지 않았지만 남편의 끊임없는 노력으로 남편의 낯익은 목소리를 기억해낼 수 있었다.     '한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부' 소식을 접한 네티즌은 "한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부가 60년만에 만날 수 있었던 건 하늘의 뜻이다" "한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부, 죽은 줄 알았던 남편의 정성이 하늘에 닿았나보다" "한국전쟁 때 헤어진 노부부, 정말 감동적이다" "60년 만에 재회한 노부부의 사연 가슴이 찡하다... 얼마나 보고 싶었을까" 등의 반응을 보였다.         Veteran POWs recall misery of North Korean captivity   By Diana Magnay, CNN July 26, 2013 -- Updated 0222 GMT (1022 HKT)     Source: CNN     Seoul (CNN) -- Pictured giggling on a park bench, 89-year-old Lee Soon-sang and his wife, Kim Eun-hae, look as though they met just yesterday.   In fact, they married more than 60 years ago. But for half a century, Kim believed her husband was dead, missing in action during the Korean War (1950-53).   Then in August 2004, a telephone call came from China. "I thought someone was trying to make money off me. I got many calls like that over the years from China, but I didn't pay attention," she said.     This was no ordinary call. The voice on the other end of the line shook her to the core. It really was her husband.     "I asked, 'Are you really alive?' He answered, 'Yes, I am alive.' Then I asked if he knew so and so, and he did know them. That's how I knew it was real."   When they finally met, they barely recognized each other. "He was so skinny, he was wobbling in," recalled Kim. "I could only recognize his nose."   In contrast Lee couldn't believe how well fed his wife looked. "She looked like one of those landlords from the old days," he said. "And the propaganda, that all South Koreans are starving to death ... that Americans are taking all the rice and only giving back rotten flour ... I only heard this kind of propaganda, so I thought she was dead.   "We just held each other and cried." Lee Soon-sang had been captured by the North Korean army in 1953, two days before the Armistice was signed. He spent three-and-a-half years in a prisoner of war camp and was then sent to work in the notorious coalmines at Aoji, North Korea -- also a production site for gunpowder. There he had remarried and had children -- though he said he never forgot about life before the war. "Life in North Korea was hard', he said. "So I always thought about my hometown. Even though I believed my wife was dead, I always thought I'd go back one day." Decades later, in 2004, a "broker" got in touch -- they are middlemen who make their living smuggling people in and out of North Korea. "He told me that Kim Eun-hae and my son were in China with lots of money, that I should take the money and go back to North Korea to live a better life."   Aged 77 by then, he had managed to save up 20,000 North Korean won (approximately US$150) selling cigarettes. "In North Korea, that's a lot of money. You could buy a small house with that. I gave that to my wife and said, 'I'm going to pick acorns, I'll be back in two or three days.' That's how I left."   He said he meant to return. But he never did.   He won't talk about the family he left behind. "I'm happy now. You're my wife," he told Kim. But the bitterness of his choice is a reality for many whose lives and loyalties were split by a divided Korea.   Why the Korean War still matters Lee attends a lunch organized for prisoners of war like him -- a group of about a dozen men who meet three times a week, all of whom were held captive in the North long after the 1953 Armistice agreement when Pyongyang agreed to return all prisoners of war.   Kim Sung Tae left his adopted daughter behind in North Korea when he fled in 2001. "How can we see each other unless there's reunification?" He's 81. He does not expect to see her again. He described the terrible hardships of his life in North Korea, especially the six months he spent in a prisoner of war camp. "We were fed just a few hundred grams of grain a day," he recalled. "I would wake up in the morning and grab handfuls of lice from my body. That was normal."   For more than a decade after, his life was spent in a succession of regular prisons, often in solitary confinement in a cell no larger than the size of a crouching man. "When I came back to South Korea, I asked them to take me to a prison here so I could compare. It was like paradise. South Korean prisons treated their prisoners better than North Korea treated their citizens."   According to South Korea's Defense Ministry, 8,343 former servicemen have returned to the South since 1953. Eighty of those men escaped through a third country decades after the Armistice was signed. Based on their testimony, the Seoul government believes there are still some 500 POWs living in the North. Kim Sung Tae feels the government should do more to bring them home.   Recently, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihi-jae repeated his call for North Korea to resolve the issue of former servicemen and other abductees kept by the North. Pyongyang claims they are there of their own free will. And in the absence of actual talks between the two countries, Seoul has little leverage to orchestrate their release.   Men like Lee Soon-sang and Kim Sung Tae are living proof that Pyongyang is wrong. But many Korean war veterans are now well into their eighties -- no longer at an age where fleeing across treacherous borders is particularly feasible. Men whose fate was sealed when they were taken prisoner 60 years ago may never see freedom again.