How many separated family members are there?

South and North Korean authorities have come together many times over the past half-century to resolve the issue of families divided between the South and the North, but even they have failed to determine the exact number of dispersed family members. The ambiguous figure of "10 million separated people¡± has been symbolically used to describe their agony.

During the period between the National Liberation in 1945 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, about 3.5 million people crossed the border and went into the North. During the war (1950-1953), some one million went to the North, about 85,000 were kidnapped by the North and 300,000 went missing. The total number thus reaches around five million people. The North Korean side estimated the total number of displaced people at about 10 million, an arbitrary number as in the case of the South.

The government approached this question realistically only when the Unification Ministry submitted related documents to the National Assembly in 1994 during the parliamentary inspection of the ministry. According to ministry data, provided by the National Statistical Office, a census on population and housing conducted in November 1990 revealed that the number of people hailing from the North aged 35 or more stood at 417,632. Based on this, the total number of displaced family members was estimated at 4.2 million.

However, the five North Korean provincial offices in Seoul explained that it was difficult to give the precise number because many North Koreans here in the South had changed their original domicile addresses.

The statistics presented by the Unification Ministry and the Korea National Red Cross appear to come closer to the exact number of separated families. According to these statistics, until 1970, 5,463,000 people whose original addresses were in the North applied for tentative domiciles. Considering that the population increased 40.34 percent in the South from 1971 to 1996, the number of separated families is estimated at 7.67 million won as of 1996. Of this, the first-generation family members totaled 1.23 million, or 16 percent.

Specialists on North Korea here assumed that the North has more accurate statistics about the dispersed families in light of its rigidly controlled society. The North`s social security ministry started a campaign last year to locate separated families from the South in order to help them find their relatives at home and abroad.

Officials of the North Korean provincial offices asserted that the two Koreas should conduct joint probes to determine the true number of displaced relatives before it is too late, noting that the first-generation people, most of whom are over 70, are dying without finding out anything about their loved ones.