It's been 70 years but we are still apart
In 1983, KBS (Korea Broascasting System) had a revolutionary live TV show trying to find divided families within South Korea. At first it was a pilot show just to see how it would impact the public. Nobody who was directing the program didn’t expect that much power of it. But as soon as the first family got to meet, more than 1,450 people registered for help. And within 10 days, the number went over 10,000. The show was all over the country. More than 3,000 people were in front of KBS building trying not to miss a single person that is walking by, wondering and worrying if the person that they were looking for would pass them. ‘Looking for dispersed families’ was live for 138 days, total 453 hours 45 minutes. 100,953 people registered, 53,536 episodes were introduced. And total 10,189 people were abled to find their relatives.
In this book, 20 stories of dispersed family members in South Korea are collected from this TV show and the talks are translated into English by myself. Each spread contains the talk/stories and the moment when they finally meet each other.
The whole book is bound on both left and right sides and cut into half with a saw. The book works when the other half is right next to each other. The concept of making this book(s) was to show the tradgety of separated families in Korea and inform people that there are still tremendous number of families that are apart.
