High Ratings

TV finds lost relatives

On a cold, windy day in 1951, 25-year-old Kim Ok Soon was fleeing south before an invading Communist army in the countryside east of Seoul. Pausing for rest and a drink of water at a well, she left her young daughter with some fellow refugees. When she returned, the little girl was gone. That same year Kim Sung Soo, 8, was separated from his mother in the wartime chaos around Chonan, 50 miles south of the capital. An aunt left him in an orphanage while she searched for his mother. She did not find her. Huh Hyun Chul, 9, lost his four-year-old sister when she was left behind at a barbershop during the family's flight from the war. These are but a few among millions of such stories from the Korean conflict. Now, thanks to some remarkably imaginative television programming, these three have ended happily.

So have thousands of others on a month-old telethon put on by the Seoul-based Korean Broadcasting System (KBS-TV). Called Searching for Separated Families, the show has reunited some 3,000 South Korean families sundered by the war. Mrs. Kim Ok Soon and her daughter came together last month. Kim Sung Soo and his mother finally found each other a few weeks ago. Huh Hyun Chul learned that his sister is alive and living in Cheju, a resort island off the southern coast. One elderly woman even found her long-lost sister seated in the same row with her at the studio. Both were going on the show in hopes of locating each other.

The program was conceived by Producer Ahn Kuk Jong, 39, as the final two-hour episode in a project commemorating the Korean War. His purpose: to convey the hardships suffered by families pulled apart in the conflict. People were selected to appear on-camera for about 15 seconds at a time, carrying placards inscribed with their names, the names of the missing and a brief description of how they were separated. Announcers read the placards to viewers while the cameras zoomed in on the faces of the searchers. Fourteen telephone lines were open, awaiting inquiries from viewers who thought they were being sought, or who recognized the placard bearers.

So overwhelming was the response to this original broadcast that the network immediately decided to continue the telethon for a total of 65 hours over the following eight days. Since then, the program has been moved into a regular twelve-hour time slot that begins on Friday nights. It has become by far the most popular TV show in South Korea, commanding as much as 78% of the viewing audience. Lee Won Hong, 54, president of KBS-TV, attributes the telethon's success in part to color television's widespread acceptance in South Korea, but the show's emotional impact and human drama are at least equally important. The on-the-air reunions are invariably heartrending, as years of anguish find release in paroxysms of joy and recognition. The program's hosts are often misty-eyed and speechless, the viewers moved to tears.

So far, more than 100,000 people have applied to appear on the show; 20,000 have been accepted. For those who will not get their chance on television, help may nevertheless be on the way. KBS-TV and the government have combined forces to process all of the applicants' data into a single computer bank, a step that could make locating lost relatives easier. The South Korean Red Cross is helping by registering families seeking missing relatives at its local offices. They will all have plenty to do. By one estimate, as many as 10 million Korean families were broken up by the war. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.