2 Generations, 2 Different Perspectives On Korean Reunification

Jean H. Lee, the former Pyongyang bureau chief for The Associated Press, is the director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Center.

Fleeing war in North Korea in 1951, my aunt and her siblings scrambled aboard an American cargo ship pulling away from port, her parents and grandmother shouting their names to keep track of them in the chaos of the evacuation. They made it. But their grandfather stayed behind in Wonsan to protect the family property.

He thought his family would return. They never saw him, or the rest of their family in North Korea, again.

As the leaders of North Korea, South Korea and the United States discuss denuclearization and a possible peace treaty to formally end the Korean War of the 1950s, I wanted to check in with my aunt, a child of the war who was born in North Korea, and her millennial