SerpApi.Org
Author Bora Lee Reed’s grandfather left his home in Pyongyang in 1950. That was the last time his family saw his face, until an old photo miraculously resurfaced.
When my father left his home in Pyongyang, North Korea, he sincerely believed he’d come back again. It was the winter of 1950, and China had just entered the war between the North and the South, shattering the uneasy calm that had given his father, my grandfather, enough confidence to leave Pyongyang to visit churches he’d planted in distant villages.
He was due back any day, so my father waited at home with his mother and three younger siblings. Bombs fell, fires erupted and still they waited, desperate for his return. My grandfather was head of the family. They didn’t know how to act without him, but when they could remain no longer — as Pyongyang burned around them — they packed a few things and fled. They had neither the time nor the inclination to say goodbye to friends or neighbors. No one paused at the threshold to take a last look around their small house. In a gesture that hindsight renders heartbreakingly naive, they hid an alarm clock and the family Bible in the rafters above the door. They wanted to protect their most valued possessions until they returned. They never saw that house, or my grandfather, again.
Among the catastrophes of war, amidst death and destruction and displacement, sits the quieter devastation of family separation. Millions of people were separated from parents, children, siblings and cousins in the wake of the Korean War. The people they loved disappeared into the gaping maw of the unknown. Though the distance between Pyongyang, North Korea, and Seoul, South Korea, is just 120 miles — about the length of Long Island — a formidable, nearly impenetrable border separates what are now two countries. For 75 years, and with very few exceptions, the citizens of North Korea have had no contact with the rest of the world, and vice versa: no visits, letters, phone calls, emails or internet searches.
During and immediately after the war, my father and his family lived as refugees in the South. My grandmother hiked into the snow-covered hills to harvest branches, which she sold to UN soldiers who burned them as firewood. My father peddled salt and hired himself out as a day laborer, spending nights in the abandoned kiln of an old brick factory. He was interrogated at gunpoint by South Korean soldiers determined to root out communists. One night, he was inexplicably rounded up and thrown in jail. A week later, he was released, still without explanation. After an intense, feverish illness, the baby of the family died. Weeks turned into months, then years. My grandmother found work as a cook in an orphanage, and my father managed to finish high school.
It must have been around this time that the idea occurred to him. For more than three years, it had taken everything just to survive, but by 1954, my father and his family had found a bit of purchase, just enough stability for a certain kind of hope to arise.
My father remembered that in 1943, they had lived for a year in Jeolla-do. My grandfather, exhausted by the harassment and persecution he was enduring from the occupying Japanese government, decided to move the family to the southern province. He knew a man there, someone who happened to own a photography studio. My father remembered that man and that studio. Since the two had been close, my father thought, could this friend have taken a portrait of his father?
The possibility enticed him enough to make the long, arduous trip to Jeolla-do. It took two days by train and bus, a distance that can now be covered in a few hours via South Korea’s high-speed rail. He made his way to the town in Jeolla-do and even managed to find his father’s old friend. But there was no photograph. There wasn’t even a photography studio anymore. It had all been destroyed in the war.
My father never got to say a proper farewell to his father. There was no final embrace or bowing of the head to receive a paternal blessing. He didn’t have a moment to stare at his father’s face, trying to memorize his features. No wonder he wanted that photograph.
Born long after the war, I have no memories of that time, but I’ve carried my family’s story with me. I’ve asked questions and taken in the details: the sight of Pyongyang in winter, the generosity and cruelty of strangers, and the dreadful feeling of carrying a dead body up a hill for burial. I took it all in, and then I became a writer.
Our family moved to California from South Korea in 1972. By 1980, we were living in Cerritos, a suburb of Los Angeles. One day, my father received a visit from an elderly pastor who had once lived in Pyongyang. As they reminisced, this gentleman pulled out an old photo from his seminary class and showed it to my father.
My father gaped, stunned.
“Do you know who that is?” he asked the elderly pastor, pointing a shaking finger at a young man in the photo.
“Yes, that’s Lee Hyo Sung,” the pastor said. “He was my classmate in seminary.”
My father could barely speak. “That’s my father,” he said.
In that moment, my father looked into the face of his father — a face he hadn’t seen since 1950.
Since the day he left Pyongyang, my father had never stopped seeking news of own. During the war, he spoke to people through church networks, once even hearing a rumor that his father was alive and hiding from the communists in someone’s cellar. After the war, and even after we moved to the States, he pursued what avenues he could: he petitioned the Korean government, the U.S. government, and nonprofits dedicated to reuniting divided families, all to no avail.
Now, my father is 91. And though he knows that his father is no longer alive, he still nurtures a hope that North Korea may open up enough for him to know what happened to him. Until then, he has his memories, his faith, and a small photograph that, in the unlikeliest of circumstances, found its way home.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Bora Lee Reed’s debut novel, Song for Another Home, is available now from 37 Ink, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.
Read the original article on People
