July 09, 2020
Do Not Forget Korean-Americans With Family Stuck in North Korea
As the Korean War reaches its 70th year and we ponder what the next four of U.S. policy toward North Korea will look like following the upcoming elections in November, one thing is tragically likely: the Korean War will not end before it turns seventy-five. Even if the belligerents were to sign a peace treaty, unless there is a meaningful change from Pyongyang’s authoritarian leadership tactics, the war will have ended in name only.
It is important to reflect on the still-divided families which have suffered for decades and for whom time is running out.
Millions of Koreans will still be trapped north of the DMZ, living in abject poverty without the human rights which nearly every other country on earth grants its citizens. Millions of Koreans south of the DMZ will still be living within the range of conventional artillery controlled by a regime that has willfully subjected tens of millions of its own citizens to starvation and inhuman suffering in the name of developing nuclear weapons and maintaining a stranglehold over half of the peninsula.
The partition of the Korean Peninsula, the Korean War, and the subsequent isolation of North Korea resulted in the division of up to ten million families. With the passage of this anniversary, it is important to reflect on the still-divided families which have suffered for decades and for whom time is running out.
Read the full article in The National Interest.
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