Kim Jong-un’s Words That Put South Koreans Into Tears
“Much time has passed since North and South cooperated like we are doing today. We have been waiting too long for this meeting to happen. Now as we stand face-to-face, I realize that North and South Korea are a family by blood that cannot live apart from each other.” (See video here)
These were the words of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader who put all of us on our toes with his incessant nuclear threats last year. His sudden gesture of friendship startled South Koreans — who were not only surprised to hear his voice, but moved by the thought of a reunification that many of us couldn’t imagine for a while Everything he said that day went viral on South Korean social media, including a joke he made about naengmyeon, a cold noodle dish originating from the North Korean capital of Pyeongyang. Possibly for the first time ever, the media portrayed Kim Jong-un as diplomatic and amicable.
As a millennial growing up in Korea, the Korean War was a distant idea that I only read about in books. Some of my friends’ grandparents had family members living in North Korea, but I could never relate to the idea of a unified Korea to the same extent as the older generations. The separation of the Korean peninsula was a part of history that our generation had learned to put at the back of our minds — behind our obsession with education, wealth, and k-pop. It was a part of our national identity and history, but nothing more. And if anything, we seemed to increasingly distance ourselves from North Korea as we began weighting the economic and social costs of reunifying with the most isolated nation in the world.
In the United States or in Europe, people would often ask me about North Korea. “Have you met any North Koreans before?” The answer to that has recently changed from a ‘No’ to ‘Yes’, as I recently interviewed a few defectors. But as to whether I’ve met North Korean citizens, the answer is still a ‘No’. “Do you want the two Koreas to unite one day?” No — I said this because I was comfortable with the security provided by my nation, and I didn’t want to risk that by making compromises with a regime that had completely different ideologies as us. This was, in effect, the extent of my relationship with North Korea.
But strange things happened leading up to the summit. When South and North Korea walked in the Pyeongchang Olympics opening ceremony together under the Korea Unification flag, I remembered the past that the Koreas had left behind — one where our people didn’t have to live with the pain of being separated from our friends and family. Then Kim Jong-un clapped along to K-pop stars during the 2-hour performance in Pyeongyang, which signaled his fondness of the pop culture that lies at the very heart of the southern neighbor’s recent developments. I found myself wondering as I watched a footage of the North Korean audience watching K-pop performances — are they fascinated by K-pop stars, or are they repulsed by South Korea’s westernized pop culture? Then I thought of the many other South Koreans who would have watched the same footage on TV, especially those who may have been searching for their separated family members on screen.
Watching Kim Jong-un speak of peace, I found myself get emotional, as if his words were exposing an unhealed wound. North and South Koreans truly are a family by blood — we had been a single nation for centuries prior to these 65 years of separation. We share one language, one history, and a heritage that simply cannot be undone just by the political discord of the 20th century. Although I have never felt the excruciating pain of being separated from my family, the events last weekend made me understand it better, and also made me wonder what we can do to live together again, without war.
South Korean President Moon Jae In’s liberal approach to North Korea, a drastic change to nearly 10 years of conservative leadership in South Korea, has reminded many South Koreans of the Korean peninsula without a border. While Kim Jong Un’s words by no means promise anything, and his volatile nature leave things more unforeseeable than ever, the improved diplomatic relations let us dream of a future we had forgotten about.
