If you haven’t read the story of Renate Hong, the [East] German woman who is hoping to meet her North Korean husband for the first time in 46 years, I advise you to do so.
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6 Comments
Interesting how she embodied the traditional Korean notion of fidelity far better than her husband did.
The traditional Korean notion of fidelity would be polygamy for men. I don’t see anywhere in the article if the husband remarried, but even if he did, he’d be quite accurately following the tradition.
I stand corrected.
Cebuanas!
“The now elderly Hong first met her North Korean husband when she was 18 and they were both students at a university in East Germany. The two fell in love and married after dating five years.
Hong, however, has not seen her husband since North Korea forcibly called back students studying abroad in 1961….
At first, the couple were able to keep in touch through letters, but all contact was cut off after two years….”
So what happened in 1961 that caused DPRK to recall all students studying abroad? Something to do with the Sino-Soviet “split” I suppose.
There was a Polish professor of Korean Studies in Warsaw who had married a North Korean dude, and one day she was sent back to Poland. If memory serves — but that’s a story I was told 20 years ago when I visited Poland, so the details are blurry — she never saw her again.
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