Soldiers such as this South Korean sentry stand guard over the demilitarized zone. The heavily fortified DMZ has been a fact of life since the end of the Korean War.

Crossing the great divide

By Carol Clark
CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- The border between North and South Korea remains highly armed and tense 50 years after the start of the bitter war that divided the peninsula. In recent months, however, a series of historic firsts is fueling hopes that the two enemies may one day fully reconcile and reclaim their shared identity going back 5,000 years.

In August, dozens of relatives who have had no communication since the war crossed the border for four-day reunions. More temporary reunions are scheduled for other separated families. The two Koreas also recently agreed to reconnect a cross-border railroad line, conducted ministerial level talks and held a meeting of defense chiefs.

This new era in Korean political relations was launched by an unprecedented summit in June between the leaders of the two countries. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il met in Pyongyang where they signed a landmark agreement to hold a second summit meeting, promote South Korean investment in the North and allow reunions of separated families.

The summit was "a landmark event in Korean history, tantamount to putting a symbolic end to the Korean War," said Alexander Mansourov, a Korea scholar and a former Russian diplomat who was posted in Pyongyang in the late 1980s.

The Korean War erupted on June 25, 1950. The three years of brutal fighting between the North and South ended in a truce, leaving the two Koreas bitter, armed to the teeth and technically still at war.

North Korea today is a communist dictatorship, an isolated, destitute country cut off from modern technology and struggling with severe food shortages. South Korea evolved into a capitalist democracy, a manufacturing dynamo now embracing the digital economy.

Many Korea observers believe that after decades of division and enmity, reconciliation -- perhaps even eventual reunification -- is vital if the Korean Peninsula is to take its rightful place in the world.

"In some sense, we have one foot in the Cold War era and another in the post-Cold War era, and how are you going to really walk straight when your feet are in different worlds?" Lee Hong-koo, South Korea's ambassador to the United States, said at a recent Washington symposium.

"We are now going through a very difficult period in which, perhaps together -- that is, North and South together -- we're trying to write the very last chapter in the history of the Cold War. Whether we could write that chapter successfully and without another war or not, that is the question the Koreans face today."

The Rev. Syngman Rhee, a Presbyterian minister in Virginia, has worked hard toward a peaceful resolution of Korea's division.

"I'm certain that if the opportunities are given by the political powers in the North and South, the Korean people are going to be reunited. That is my conviction," he said.

Rhee was born in Pyongyang in 1931 and named after a leader of Japanese resistance who later became the first president of South Korea.

"My four sisters live in North Korea. My brother lives in South Korea," Rhee said. "Between them there is no means of communication. That's the tragic reality."

'Devastating' colonial era

Rhee, right, and his younger brother, Syngkyu, in 1950, shortly after they left North Korea and joined the South Korean marines

The story of Rhee's family sounds dramatic to outsiders, but it is all too common for Koreans. It is the story of endurance against incredible odds.

Although Korea was independent for centuries, it faced repeated invasions by its more powerful neighbors. Japan fought two wars to expand its sphere of influence over Korea: with China in 1894 and with Russia in 1904. Japan won both times and in 1910 it formally annexed the Korean kingdom.

Decades of suppression followed. The Japanese forbid Koreans to speak their own language and even to keep their Korean names. At school Rhee could only speak Japanese. But his father, a Christian minister, insisted on using the native language at his church and in his home.

"The policy of Japan to try to rid Korea of its cultural roots was quite devastating," Rhee said. "In public places, you were indoctrinated, they tried to make a Japanese out of you. At home you were told, 'You're not Japanese, you're Korean.' The awakening of my struggle to be myself came quite early in my childhood."

While the colonial era failed to eradicate the strong sense of identity among Koreans, it did manage to forge bitter divisions between those who openly collaborated with the Japanese and those who actively resisted the occupation.

One of Rhee's most vivid memories is the end of World War II and the liberation of Korea.

"I remember the broadcast over the radio about the surrender of Japan," Rhee said. "The police standing at attention, listening to the announcement. Soon after that jubilant crowds coming out to celebrate. People were dancing and shouting that they were free. It was wonderful joy."

Communism vs. capitalism

The celebration did not last long for Rhee's family.

At successive wartime conferences the Soviet Union and the United States both had pledged a postwar independent Korea. But when Soviet units began moving into northern Korea shortly after Hiroshima in August 1945, U.S. officials realized that unless they could get their own troops on the scene, the Soviets could well occupy the entire peninsula.

Since no troops were immediately available, U.S. military planners hastily ordered a division of the peninsula at the 38th parallel to create northern and southern zones of occupation. The Soviets complied with the order, staying north of the boundary. U.S. troops did not arrive in southern Korea until a month later.

A Korean girl and her brother stand beside an M-26 tank during the Korean War. The war ripped apart tens of thousands of families and left many children without parents.

The occupation zones, meant as a temporary convenience to accept the Japanese surrender, soon hardened into two diametrically opposed Korean regimes.

The Moscow-backed North became the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948 and the U.S.-sponsored South was declared the Republic of Korea.

After the communists took over the North many ministers fled to the south, but Rhee's father refused to leave his congregation. In 1950 he was arrested, along with other pastors, and killed.

Rhee, then 19, and his younger brother dug up the manacled body of their father from a common grave in a field and buried him properly. The pair then went south. They had to leave their mother and siblings behind.

Rhee and his younger brother joined the South Korean marines to fight in the Korean War. Their older brother who remained behind in the North was killed by a U.S. bomb.

Although the war resolved nothing and ended in a stalemate, it left an estimated 1.3 million to 2.4 million Koreans dead. Nearly 37,000 U.S. troops were killed and another 103,000 wounded. An estimated 900,000 Chinese troops were killed and wounded. Turkey, Britain, Canada, France, Australia, Greece and other U.N. countries lost between 2,000 and 3,000 troops.

Tens of thousands of Korean families were separated and the entire peninsula was in dire poverty.

The armistice called for a no-man's land 2.4 miles wide to run 150 miles across the middle of the peninsula at approximately the 38th parallel. To this day this heavily mined "demilitarized zone," or DMZ, bristles on its opposing borders with thousands of troops on hair-trigger alert. Some 37,000 U.S. troops remain stationed in South Korea -- a situation the summit did not, and was not expected to, address.

'We must find a way through the hostility'

Rhee went to the United States after the war ended. He became a minister and served as president of the National Council of Churches. He said that living abroad, and meeting with the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., awoke his desire to begin a ministry of reconciliation for the two halves of his homeland.

"I was able to look at the division more objectively, not just kill or be killed," he said. "When you're in the thick of it you cannot see well. You need to look at it from a distance."

The Rev. Syngman Rhee with his four sisters in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 1986. The family was separated during the Korean War when Rhee fought for the South and his sisters remained in the North.

In 1978 Rhee made his first trip back to North Korea. His mother had died eight years earlier, but his four sisters survived. Despite the vast differences in their ways of life, the family bond remained strong and Rhee said their reunion was joyful. "We began to talk about what we had been through and suddenly there was no gap."

In his capacity as a religious leader, Rhee is one of a handful of outsiders allowed to regularly visit North Korea, one of the world's most closed societies. Since that initial trip, he has made more than 20 visits to both North and South Korea.

"I was a militaristic person," Rhee said. "I served with the South Korean marines for five years in the battlefield and I realized that is not the solution. We must find a way through the hostility. Another war would be a nuclear one and it would make the Korean War look like child's play."

Prior to the summit, Han S. Park, director of the Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of Georgia, characterized Korea as being at great risk of another war.

"I consider the Korean Peninsula to be one of the most dangerous regions in the world," Park said. "It has the highest concentration of weapons and military power with no channels of communication. The provocation is high. It's a very uncertain, precarious spot."

Post-war recovery

After the devastation caused by the war, both Koreas focused on rebuilding.

South Korea went through years of tumult under authoritarian leaders. It suffered two military coups and a series of popular rebellions but managed to industrialize and grow into the world's 11th largest economy. During the past decade it has made great advances toward becoming a full democracy.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997 hit South Korea hard, driving it to near-bankruptcy. It has since recovered and come back stronger than ever, beginning a series of painful reforms aimed at ensuring its long-term place as a major global player.

North Koreans bow before a statue of the "Great Leader," the late Kim Il Sung

North Korea took a strikingly different path in its post-war development. Its Moscow-anointed leader, Kim Il Sung, imposed a Korean version of Stalinism and built a cult of personality around himself that rivaled that of China's Mao Tse-tung.

The economy enjoyed a spurt of growth but then encountered severe difficulties. The problems accelerated with the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991, followed by floods that led to crop failures and mass starvation.

Although North Korea declined economically, its military prowess kept developing. Fears that North Korea was making nuclear weapons nearly sparked another war in the early 1990s.

The crisis was defused in 1994 when North Korea signed an agreement with the United States and promised to freeze its nuclear program. In return, a consortium of U.S., Japanese and South Korean partners agreed to build two light water reactors worth $4.6 billion to provide nuclear energy for the North.

Secret talks

Even as the animosity simmered between the two Koreas, attempts at reestablishing political ties were under way. Secret negotiations between senior officials of both countries resulted in a joint communique in 1972 calling for "great national unity" and a series of meetings to be conducted through representatives of the Red Cross from both sides. The talks ultimately bogged down, but in 1990 the prime ministers of the two countries met, marking the first direct talks between the two governments.

Former President Jimmy Carter makes a historic visit with Kim Il Sung in 1994

In 1994 former U.S. President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang to help ease the nuclear crisis. His visit helped pave the way for a groundbreaking invitation from Kim Il Sung to South Korean President Kim Young-sam to come to the North and meet with him. But Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack weeks before the planned occasion could take place.

Hopes for a long-awaited reconciliation were again dashed.

Kim Il Sung's son and designated successor, Kim Jong Il, took power as South Korea and other countries around the world anxiously waited and wondered whether the younger Kim could prevent North Korea from disintegrating into chaos. By 1995 North Korea became an aid-based regime, dependent on charity from the United Nations and other organizations to provide the basic needs for its population.

Longtime opposition leader Kim Dae-jung was elected president of South Korea in 1998. Throughout his career he has pushed for democratic principles and has stressed the importance of engagement with North Korea.

New hopes for peace

Kim Dae-jung's controversial "sunshine policy" finally produced a tangible result -- an invitation to Pyongyang for the June summit.

Prior to the summit, Korea observers were cautiously optimistic about the outcome.

The prospects for peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula "have never looked better than they do today," said K.A. Namkung, a resident scholar at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a Washington think tank.

"All the surrounding powers wish them well. For the first time, they are hoping that the two Koreas can work this out, as opposed to figuring out how to carve up the peninsula."

Senior officials from both sides hammered out a framework for the summit that downplayed the thorniest issues, including the South's concerns over North Korea's missile program and the North's recurring demand that U.S. troops be withdrawn from the peninsula.

Instead, the summit was designed to focus on the issues of family reunions and economic exchange.

Economic cooperation is one topic on the agenda for the upcoming summit. It is an issue that could help nourish some of North Korea's famine-stricken children.

"The reason why North Korea accepted the meeting is that North Korea wanted economic cooperation in return for some concessions on meetings for separated families," Park Jong-chul, a director of the Korean Institute for National Unification in Seoul, told Reuters before the meeting. "These are the easiest issues to get agreements on."

The biggest hope among many Korea watchers going into the summit was that it would lead to further direct engagements between the two leaders.

"All we can expect at this summit meeting is some kind of scaffolding" paving the way for future meetings and agreements, Namkung said. "It's the first step in a long process but an extremely important one."

Even before the meeting, analysts predicted it would likely take decades to realize a full reconciliation between the two Koreas.

"There are systemic issues that go very deep into this conflict," Namkung said. "Modern Korea really cannot be understood without understanding the era of Japanese colonial rule, and how that produced two groups of people -- those who fought against them and those who collaborated."

Further back in Korea's long history, 1,300 years ago, the peninsula was divided into three kingdoms -- one in the North and two in the South -- and hostilities took place between them. "Even today the vestiges of those three kingdoms remain in the lives of everyday Koreans," Namkung said.

"The Korean people are one people, culturally and historically -- the basic identity is the same," said Rhee.

"We share a common struggle to be a self-determining people. The major powers surrounding Korea used to make the decisions. The time is ripe for an agreement among the Korean people themselves."

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