Hyun Mi was 13 when he fled Pyongyang with his parents and five siblings to escape the fighting on the Korean Peninsula. Chinese troops were approaching the North Korean capital and his family planned to hide further south until they passed.
“I thought it would be a week, but that week has become 70 years old,” said Hyun, now 83.
But now, for the first time since the family ran away, Hyun has been able to visit his childhood home – or at least a version of it – using virtual reality technology.
In the absence of family reunions in real life, the South Korean government hopes that a new virtual reality project will provide some comfort to elderly North Korean refugees who fear that time is running out.
Fleeing North Korea
Thousands of people like Hyun fled North Korea during the Korean War in the 1950s, crossing the border with China and Russia. Many ended up in South Korea.
Photo released on December 26, 1950 of Korean civilians escorted by a military police jeep, fleeing to South Korea. The photo was taken during the Korean War between South and North Korea. Credit: AFP / Getty images
Hyun said many North Korean women stayed behind to protect their homes while the men and their children fled, fearing they would be killed by Chinese soldiers, who are considered less likely to kill a woman.
His family left his two younger sisters, aged 6 and 9, in the care of his grandmother.
They planned to return when the fighting subsided, but after the war ended with an armistice in 1953, North Korea and South Korea erected an almost impenetrable border between countries, preventing anyone from crossing the two sides.
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 reunite the Koreas, but on their own terms.
Unlocated photo, taken on January 18, 1951, shows Korean refugees passing through frozen rice fields as they fled south. Credit: AFP / Getty images
Although the two countries allowed selected families to come together for brief and exciting meetings, most families that were separated during the war were never able to see their loved ones.
The meetings are conducted by a lottery system based on the age and 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 South Korean families were able to meet with their North Korean relatives. Many of the participants were in their 90s.
Reminders from the past
The anguish of separated families prompted the South Korean Ministry of Unification 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, the chief executive of the Seoul-based Tekton Space RV company, to create VR experiences for North Korean refugees.
“There are many displaced people in Korea and they all want to visit their hometown, but cannot because of the circumstances,” said Ahn.
Hyun – a well-known singer in South Korea whose successes include a 1960s song about being separated from her loved ones – was the first North Korean refugee to take a virtual tour of her homeland.
A Pyongyang sketch of a 3D artist based on the memories of Hyun Mi. Credit: Courtesy Ministry of Unification
Recreating places in reclusive North Korea was not easy, Ahn said.
His company interviewed Hyun, asking him to recall vivid moments from his childhood. As she spoke, a designer sketched what she described, periodically checking that the design matched her memories. These sketches were then transformed into 3D designs.
“It was very scary when we started,” said 3D designer Moun Jong-sik. “What if the thing I did doesn’t look like her memories?”
But when Hyun put on the VR headset in September this year, she found she couldn’t stop crying.
“I arrived in North Korea!” Hyun exclaimed.
A virtual reality recreation of the market in Pyongyang, North Korea, where Hyun Mi spent his childhood. Credit: Courtesy Ministry of Unification
Pyongyang’s recreation was not exactly the same as she remembered, she said, but it was close. While Hyun watched a snow-covered recreation of the house where she grew up, she said that she was still thinking about her parents, now long dead.
“The faces of my mother, father, sisters and brothers shone before me,” she said.
Hyun remembered how crowded his house was with eight brothers around the dinner table, and sneaking into his father’s store to eat squid without him knowing it. She saw a seafood market in Pyongyang, where she used to play skipping rope, and the Taedong River, where she used to swim as a child.
Hyun still lives with the pain of leaving two of his sisters behind. She briefly met with one of them in China 20 years ago, a meeting made possible by a broker with commercial relations in North Korea. The meeting was filmed by a documentary team and then televised. Her sister was only 6 when she left and would live a much more difficult life.
“If I had come with you, I could have been a star singer like you,” Hyun recalled his sister saying at the meeting.
A recreation of Hyun Mi’s home in Pyongyang. Credit: Courtesy Ministry of Unification
“She was almost 60, but she still looked the same. I saw how she lost all her hair, all her teeth and toenails too,” added Hyun.
In the 1990s – roughly around the time Hyun met with his sister – North Korea was hit by a famine that led to some 600,000 deaths, although earlier estimates pointed to that figure much higher.
“Even today, when I go to a buffet restaurant, I cry because there is a lot of food,” she said. “It hurts so much to see food thrown away because it makes me think of my sisters in the North.”
Future plans for refugees
Although there is no official count of the number of North Korean refugees in South Korea, the South Korean Unification Ministry said in its latest statistics released last month that, since 1988, 133,000 people have officially registered to meet their families in the north. But the chances of such meetings are decreasing as refugees age. In November, there were 49,700 registered refugees still alive in South Korea.
Ahn hopes that Hyun’s experience is just the beginning.
The country’s unification ministry showed interest in expanding the project next year to model other regions where refugees once lived, says Ahn. A ministry official said he is considering a plan, although he does not yet have a timetable. But creating tailor-made projects for each refugee will not be possible, he added.
Ahn’s company interviewed several displaced people who, like Hyun, would like to visit his hometown. They also want to see their family, but VR technology cannot help with that – the experience does not include people.
Hyun said while the virtual reality project gave her a certain comfort, what she really wants is the freedom to see family members in real life.
“I don’t want much – I don’t even want unification. I would only appreciate it if we could visit, ”she said.