Hyun Mi was 13 when she fled Pyongyang with her parents and five siblings to escape the fighting on the Korean Peninsula. Chinese troops were approaching the North Korean capital, and her family planned to hide further south until they passed.
“I thought it was going to be a week, but that week turned 70,” said Hyun, now 83.
But now, for the first time since the family fled, Hyun has been able to visit her childhood home – or at least a version of it – using virtual reality technology.
In the absence of real-life family reunions, the South Korean government hopes a new virtual reality project will provide some comfort to elderly North Korean refugees, who fear that time will run out.
Fleeing North Korea
Thousands of people like Hyun fled North Korea during the 1950 Korean War across the border with China and Russia. Many arrived in South Korea.
Image released on December 26, 1950, of Korean civilians escorted by a military police jeep fleeing to South Korea. The picture was taken during the Korean War between North and South Korea. Credit: AFP / Getty Images
Hyun said many North Korean women were left behind to guard their homes, while their men and children fled, fearing they would be killed by Chinese soldiers, who were considered less likely to kill a woman. woman.
Her family left their two younger sisters, aged 6 and 9, in the care of their grandmother.
They planned to return when the fighting eased, but after the war ended with an armistice in 1953, North and South Korea raised an almost impenetrable border between the countries, preventing anyone from crossing.
Many families like Hyun’s separated from the places they knew and the people they loved.
In the decades that followed, North Korea became increasingly isolated from the world, led by a dynasty of dictators who wanted to reunify the Koreans, but on their own terms.
The unallocated image taken on January 18, 1951 shows Korean refugees passing through frozen rice fields as they fled south. Credit: AFP / Getty Images
While the two countries allowed selected families to reunite for short, emotional encounters, most families who were separated during the war were never able to see their loved ones.
The meetings take place through a lottery system based on age and the strength of family ties. The meetings were canceled in the past, when relations between the two countries deteriorated. The last meetings took place in 2018, when 89 families from South Korea were able to meet their North Korean relatives. Many of those who took part were 90 years old.
Reminders of the past
The anxiety of separated families led the South Korean Unification Ministry to ask the country’s Red Cross to create a project to connect them with their hometowns.
The Red Cross worked with Ahn Hyo-jin, executive director of Seoul’s VR company Tekton Space, to create VR experiences for North Korean refugees.
“There are a lot of people displaced in Korea and they all want to visit their hometown, but they can’t because of the circumstances,” Ahn said.
Hyun – a well-known South Korean singer whose hits include a 1960s song about separation from loved ones – was the first North Korean refugee to take a virtual tour of her homeland.
A sketch of a Pyongyang 3D artist based on the memories of Hyun Mi. Credit: Kindness of the Ministry of Unification
It was not easy to recreate places in North Korea, Ahn said.
His company interviewed Hyun, asking him to remember vivid moments from his childhood. As she spoke, a designer sketched what she described, periodically checking to see if the drawing matched her memories. These sketches were then transformed into 3D models.
“It was very discouraging when I started,” said 3D designer Moun Jong-sik. “What if the thing I did doesn’t look like her memories?”
But when Hyun put on her VR headset in September this year, she found she couldn’t stop crying.
“We’ve arrived in North Korea!” Exclaimed Hyun.
A recreation of the virtual reality of the market in Pyongyang, North Korea, where Hyun Mi spent his childhood. Credit: Kindness of the Ministry of Unification
Pyongyang’s recreation wasn’t exactly the way she remembered it, she said, but it was close. While Hyun looked at a snow-covered recreation of the house she grew up in, she said she was still thinking about her long-dead parents.
“The faces of my mother, father, sisters and brothers shone in my face,” she said.
Hyun remembered how crowded their eight-brother house was around the table and slipped into her father’s store to eat squid without him knowing. He saw a seafood market in Pyongyang, where he used to play rope, and the Taedong River, where he swam as a child.
Hyun still lives with the pain of leaving two of her sisters behind. She briefly joined one of them in China 20 years ago, a meeting made possible by a broker with trade ties in North Korea. Their meeting was filmed by a documentary crew and later televised. Her sister was only 6 years old when she left and would lead a much harder life.
“If I came with you, I could have been a star singer just like you,” Hyun recalled, telling her sister at the meeting.
A recreation of Hyun Mi’s house in Pyongyang. Credit: Kindness of the Ministry of Unification
“He was almost 60 years old, but he looked the same. I saw him lose all his hair, teeth and toenails,” Hyun added.
In the 1990s – when Hyun met her sister – North Korea was hit by a famine that killed 600,000 people, although previous estimates put the figure much higher.
“Even today, when I go to a buffet restaurant, I cry because there is so much food,” she said. “It hurts a lot to see food thrown away because it makes me think of my northern sisters.”
Future plans for refugees
Although there is no official number of North Korean refugees in South Korea, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in its latest statistics released last month that since 1988, 133,000 people have officially registered to flee. meet the family in the north. But the chances of these meetings diminish as refugees age. As of November, 49,700 refugees had been registered still alive in South Korea.
Ahn hopes Hyun’s experience is just the beginning.
The country’s unification ministry has expressed interest in expanding the project next year to model other regions where refugees have previously lived, says Ahn. A ministry official said he was currently considering a plan, although they did not yet have a timetable. However, creating custom projects for each refugee will not be possible, he added.
Ahn’s company interviewed a number of displaced people who, like Hyun, want to be able to visit their hometown. They also want to see their family, but VR technology can’t help it – the experience doesn’t include people.
Hyun said as the virtual reality project has given her some comfort, what she really wants is the freedom to see her family members in real life.
“I don’t want much – I don’t want unification either. I would only appreciate it if we could visit each other,” she said.