My family and relatives lived in the same village. Unfortunately, many of them couldn’t come down to South Korea. I miss my younger brother the most.

I’m really looking forward to visiting my hometown again.

These people were separated from their family during the Korean War and have since suffered the pain and sorrow of separation, longing to see their long-lost kin to this day. The unfortunate split family members are the tragic symbol of national division. The sounds of gunfire ended over 60 years ago, but still, their wish is to meet their loved ones again. In fact, it was in the 1970s when South and North Korea began to make efforts to make the separated families’ ardent wish come true. Today, we’ll shed light on the first inter-Korean Red Cross talks.

The historic first inter-Korean Red Cross talks opened in Pyongyang, breaking the thick wall of division for the first time in 27 years. When the South Korean delegation crossed the so-called “bridge of no return” near Panmunjom on August 29, all South Korean citizens prayed for the success of the talks.

You just heard a news report on the first inter-Korean Red Cross talks, which were held in Pyongyang on August 30, 1972, to locate separated family members scattered throughout the Korean Peninsula. A year earlier, on August 12, 1971, then- president of the South Korean Red Cross Choi Doo-seon proposed such talks to the North Korean Red Cross. Two days later, on August 14, North Korea accepted the proposal through Pyongyang Broadcasting Station. But the two sides held preliminary meetings as many as 25 times until the first plenary session of their Red Cross talks finally took place. Here is Woo Gwang-ho, director of the international and inter-Korean bureau at the South Korean Red Cross, to explain.

Before the Red Cross talks, the two Koreas had never sat face to face for dialogue. It comes as no surprise that they had a lot of things to prepare. They had to decide on everything—what to discuss at the meeting, where to meet, who and how many people should take part in the meeting, how to ensure the safety of the delegates, how to communicate with each other, how the talks would proceed, and whether and how to disclose the meeting. It took nearly a year for the two sides to exchange opinions and agree on those details.

From the 1953 Korean War armistice to the 1970s, South and North Korea could not even think of the separated families issue due to their continuing hostility. In that situation, the two sides needed to discuss a lot to hold face-to-face meetings and find a solution to this issue. Only when the 20th preliminary talks were held in 1972, were they able to finalize agenda items for the Red Cross talks. Let’s listen to a news report from the time.

South and North Korea determined five major discussion topics for the Red Cross talks at the 20th preliminary meeting on June 16, nine months after the first such meeting was held.

Once the agenda was settled, the Red Cross talks proceeded smoothly. On August 29, 1972, the South Korean delegation led by then-vice president of the Korean Red Cross Lee Beon-seok traveled to North Korea for the historic talks. It was a South Korean delegation’s first official visit to North Korea in 27 years since national division. Let’s hear again from Mr. Woo.

The first plenary session of the inter-Korean Red Cross talks was held at the Taedong River Center in Pyongyang from August 29 to September 2 in 1972. At the talks, South and North Korea set five major tasks to help reunite families separated by the Korean War. First, they agreed to confirm the addresses and life status of separated family members throughout the peninsula. Second, the displaced family members and relatives would be allowed to meet and visit their lost kin. Third, they would freely exchange letters. Fourth, they could be reunited of their own free will. And lastly, other humanitarian issues would be discussed. The tasks were decided based on the three principles of the July 4 inter-Korean joint statement, namely, independence, peace and national unity, and the humanitarian principle of the Red Cross. Seoul and Pyongyang promised to make efforts to discuss and fulfill those tasks successfully.

Chief delegates from the two sides adopted the tasks agreed upon at preliminary meetings as the agenda for the Red Cross talks, where they pledged to ease the pain of the separated families on the basis of the humanitarian spirit. South Korean chief representative Lee Beon-seok was filled with emotion, saying that there is no winning or losing as far as inter-Korean Red Cross talks are concerned and that what matters is how faithful to each other South and North Korea will be, bearing history and people in mind. North Korea’s chief delegate Kim Tae-hee also said that the two Koreas should dispel misunderstandings and distrust but contribute to promoting the independent and peaceful unification of Korea. The second plenary session of the Red Cross talks were also held in a festive mood in Seoul on September 13, 1972. But it was difficult to solve the bilateral issues overnight, since the two Koreas had been divided for more than a quarter of a century.

From the third plenary session, the two sides were supposed to discuss details about the five tasks. But North Korea began to raise political issues. It claimed that a legal and social environment should be created first to implement the tasks. For example, it demanded that South Korea abolish its Anti-Communism Law and National Security Law and also disband anti-communism civic groups. In response, the Korean Red Cross in Seoul said that the separated families issue was not a political subject but a humanitarian problem that should be approached on the grounds of true humanity and family love. Due to the differences in opinion, the Red Cross talks came to a standstill, which continued until the mid-1980s.

As Mr. Woo explained, the third plenary session, which was held in Pyongyang on October 24, 1972, was quite different from previous ones. As the two sides discussed pragmatic ways to resolve the problem of the separated families, they showed widely differing views. Conflict intensified gradually, and North Korea declared the total suspension of dialogue after the seventh plenary session in Pyongyang on July 13, 1973. It was not until 1985 that the eighth plenary session of the inter-Korean Red Cross talks convened. At the Red Cross talks that resumed for the first time in 12 years, the South and the North agreed to exchange delegations of separated family members and art troupes. In September that year, the two sides held their first-ever reunions of separated families. But the humanitarian issue still remains unresolved, with split family members suffering from the pain of division to this day. That’s why Mr. Woo evaluates that the first inter-Korean Red Cross talks produced a result but also left challenging problems behind.

I think the five tasks agreed upon at the Red Cross talks to help reunite the separated family members, including the confirmation of their whereabouts, letter exchanges and family reunions, have been put into practice, though only in part, in the following inter-Korean talks and working-level contacts. The 1972 Red Cross talks piqued the interest of the international community. The talks promoted letter exchanges between ethnic Koreans in socialist states and their relatives in Korea, while positively influencing the projects of helping ethnic Koreans on Russia’s Sakhalin Island return home and supporting the South Korea visit by ethnic Koreans in Japan. On a disappointing note, though, South and North Korea failed to make progress in Red Cross talks afterwards due to political issues, with those tasks remaining unfulfilled.

The first inter-Korean Red Cross talks were humanitarian dialogue that the two Koreas pursued for the first time since the division of the Korean Peninsula. The talks did create the framework for resolving the separated families issue, although the humanitarian problem has yet to be fully solved. The 1972 Red Cross talks are considered an important promise that should be kept by the two Koreas with serious efforts and commitment.