In a rare move, 80-year-old Korean-American Park Mun Jae recently
received permission from the North Korean authorities to retrieve the remains
of his elder sister from the North for transport to the United States.
Park was granted access to a graveyard in the vicinity of Mansudae,
Pyongyang on Saturday, Voice of America reported on the 15th. He made the unusual request to the North Korean authorities earlier in the year, expressing his desire to lay his sister’s remains next to their mother’s grave in Chicago.
Park travels to
Pyongyang every year to provide free medical services as part of a contingent of Korean-American doctors.
His sister Kyong Jae crossed over to the North in 1951 with
the North Korean military, later
studying music in Eastern Europe before working as an opera singer in the Sea
of Blood Theatrical Troupe.
The siblings met in 1995 in Pyongyang for the first
time in 44 years, and were granted permission to meet once a year until Kyong Jae’s
death in 2012.
