The true story of Georgeta Mirciouiu, a Romanian woman who married a North Korean man in the 1950s before being forced to separate from him for more than 50 years, is to be revealed in a new radio program by South Korean broadcaster KBS.

The show, which goes on air today and tomorrow, reveals how, Mirciouiu met her future husband Jo Jung Ho when he travelled with a group of war orphans to Romania in 1952. The two married in 1957, and Mirciouiu followed her husband to Pyongyang in 1959.

However, their happiness did not last long. Amidst swirling rumors of foreign involvement in a coup attempt, Mirciouiu returned briefly to Romania so their daughter could obtain medical treatment. This was the last time that she would ever see her husband, however, as mother and daughter could not get visas to visit North Korea thereafter.

At the same time, Jo��s life took a turn for the worse, as he went from Pyongyang to school in Hamheung, and then from Hamheung to an isolated coal mine. Exchanges of letters abruptly ceased in 1967. 

Georgeta Mirciouiu her husband Jo Jung Ho and their daughter. | Image: KBS

Nevertheless, speaking on the new radio program Mirciouiu says, ��I believe that my husband is still alive in North Korea." She has been working on a Korean-Romanian dictionary for sixteen years "with only him in my mind," and dreams of sending it to him in North Korea, even if she cannot see him for herself.

The second of the two parts concerns the dying days of Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator who, like his close friend Kim Il Sung, benefited from the false impression of independence from the senior partners in the communist world, China and the Soviet Union. Moving onto broader terrain, it asks also what the end of the Ceausescu regime means for North Korea, and what preparations must be made for a future united Korean Peninsula.

The program includes the first Korean interview with Dorin Cirlan, who took part in Ceaususcu��s execution, and sees the production team travel to the execution site in Targoviste where the dictator and his wife were killed. It also includes interviews with Mircea Dinescu, a vocal critic of the Ceausescu regime, and Adelin Petrisor, a Romanian reporter who spent a week reporting officially in North Korea. They discuss the details behind the collapse of the Ceausescu government, and links to the current situation in North Korea.

Onsite research and interviews for the program were conducted by the executive director of the U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Greg Scarlatoiu, and elite defector Kim Kwang Jin of the South Korean state-run Institute for National Security Strategy.