The boy who went to school and came home an old man

This is about a boy who came back from the dead. About a mother who had given up all hope of seeing her child again. About a country taking the first tentative steps towards reconciliation. Tomorrow, 50 years after she lost him to the war that split Korea in two, Mrs Lee (left) will be reunited with her son.

For 50 years, since he vanished into thin air one day in the summer of 1950, Mrs Lee's son, Soon-hwan, existed as nothing more than a collection of creased brown photographs glued to a piece of flaking card. His five younger siblings were too young to remember very much about their big brother, and the boy's clothes, his toys, his school exercise books - all the other small mementoes of him - were lost in the chaos of the Korean War. Decades passed: Mrs Lee grew old, her other children became middle-aged, and 10 years ago her husband died. Only young Soon-hwan remained as he had always been; a delicate-looking teenager in a dark uniform with shiny buttons, all dressed up for school.

For 50 years, since he vanished into thin air one day in the summer of 1950, Mrs Lee's son, Soon-hwan, existed as nothing more than a collection of creased brown photographs glued to a piece of flaking card. His five younger siblings were too young to remember very much about their big brother, and the boy's clothes, his toys, his school exercise books - all the other small mementoes of him - were lost in the chaos of the Korean War. Decades passed: Mrs Lee grew old, her other children became middle-aged, and 10 years ago her husband died. Only young Soon-hwan remained as he had always been; a delicate-looking teenager in a dark uniform with shiny buttons, all dressed up for school.

The Lees were farmers; as the eldest of five children, Soon-hwan was the one destined to receive an education, at the Hanyong Middle School in the nearby city of Seoul. In June 1950, when the communist army swept down from North Korea at the start of the three-year war, he and his schoolmates had fled back to their homes. But Soon-hwan was a serious-minded boy and, conscious of his privilege, he decided to go back to the city to see what had become of his school and its teachers. It was July, a few weeks after the outbreak of war. Very simply, Soon-hwan never came back.

The family asked around, but nobody knew what had become of the boy. A civil war was being fought - anything might have happened. "He went out that day without telling me," says Mrs Lee, a pale, quiet lady of 85 who has been in and out of hospital recently, receiving treatment for stomach cancer. "I was out at the time, and he said to his brother, 'I'm going to take a look at the school. Tell Mum.' If I'd been there, I'd have told him not to go. He was 16 years old."

Mrs Lee's panic quickly turned to mourning, but with a tiny baby and four other children to look after in a land at war, there was plenty more to worry about. For legal reasons of inheritance, when her husband died in 1990 the family did what they had been putting off for so long, and officially registered Soon-hwan's death.

Then a month ago, a television reporter for a Korean channel came to Mrs Lee's house bearing a copy of an amazing document. The first strange thing about it was its origin - North Korea, the fanatically secretive and repressive communist dictatorship which still covers one half of the peninsula, 11 years after the end of the Cold War. But strangest of all were its contents - a list, including names, ages and addresses, of Mrs Lee, her late husband, Ahn Byong-hong, and their children. The form was an official request for a meeting, and at the top was a photograph of the man who had filled it out - a 65-year-old North Korean citizen named Ahn Soon-hwan. The news was almost unbearable: Mrs Lee's son had not been killed by a stray shell in the ruins of Seoul - he was alive, and had been living all this time as a citizen of the hated and feared Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Not only was he alive, but he was actively looking for his family and had carefully filled out this form in the hope of seeing them again. And today, he will travel to Seoul airport on the first North Korean passenger plane ever to land in South Korea. From there he will be driven to a five-star hotel in the east of the city, where he will meet Mrs Lee and her children, the family that he has not laid eyes on for 50 years. "I just couldn't believe it was true," she says. "I thought, 'Is this really happening, is it a dream?' I always thought that he was dead, because of the war and the North Koreans. I'm so glad that he's not dead. I'm so glad that he's alive."

The story would be remarkable enough if it was unique, but there are countless people like Mrs Lee on both sides of the demilitarised zone, or DMZ, which still divides the two Koreas. The 1950-53 war separated parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. In South Korea alone, there are 1.2 million people with close family members in the North - add the second and third generations, and the number comes to almost 8 million. For almost a lifetime they have had nothing to do but wait, as relations between the two rival states have wavered between suspicion and outright hostility. Then in 1997, a new president, Kim Dae Jung, was elected in Seoul, with a promise to take a more conciliatory attitude to the North, and do his best for the divided families.

Two months ago came the breakthrough for which everyone had been hoping. President Kim flew to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, at the invitation of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. If the two men had done nothing more than shake hands, it would have been a historic moment, but they went much further, agreeing to a list of practical measures intended to draw the old enemies closer together, with the goal of eventual reunification. Last week, fibre optic cables were put in place linking Pyongyang with Seoul. Yesterday, liaison offices were opened up at Panmunjom, the border village which represents the only crossing point in the razor-wire and minefields of the DMZ.

But the most powerful, emotional and symbolic moment of all comes today, when 100 people from the North and 100 people from the South will fly across the frontier to greet their long-lost relatives on the other side. "We almost gave up hope," says Soon-hwan's brother, Ahn In-hwan, who was two months old when he disappeared. "There was 1 per cent of hope left, and that has been rewarded. It is a great thing that the North and South should come together like this and, for my family, it is a miracle."

Of all the great human displacements of the 20th century, few have been as sudden, as cruel or as long-lasting as that of the separated Koreans. East and West Germans suffered a similarly traumatic division, but they could at least write to and telephone one another, and had access to the same radio and television. Even if a North Korean could afford to purchase a short-wave radio, possession of one is a grave crime, except for a privileged few. Between the two countries there are no direct mail, telephone or transportation links.

Over the years, a few thousand Southerners have sent messages and money to their relatives, by paying thousands of pounds to middlemen in the Chinese province adjoining North Korea; a few hundred have even managed to arrange clandestine meetings there. But most have been in the situation of Mrs Lee - staring into a chasm of loss, with no facts, no clues, and nothing on which to base hope or despair.

The South Korean government has prepared biographical notes on the North Korean visitors, which illustrate the tiny tragedies that trapped people on the wrong side of the line. Some were committed communists who joined the North's volunteer army. Some were South Korean soldiers who went missing with their units and became PoWs in the North. Some had left their homes temporarily, planning to return to their husbands, wives or children when the war ended and the country was reunited. Some, like Sook-hwan, simply vanished. South Korean official documents list one man, 73-year-old Lee Bok-yon, who went out to buy a bicycle in Seoul and never came back. His 71-year-old wife will meet him tomorrow and, the document drily notes, "plans to ask him why he took such a long time simply to buy a bicycle".

The paperwork exchanged by the two sides reveals nothing more than names, ages and places of origin, leaving the families to speculate on what their relatives have become over the years. "We don't know whether my son is married, or has kids or what his job is - nothing," says Mrs Lee. "But he's got a good mind. He remembered all our names, even those of his baby brothers - he remembered the exact address. He never forgot us. He must have wanted so much to see us again." But whoever he is at the age of 65, it seems likely that Soon-hwan has done well for himself.

The 100 South Koreans travelling to Pyongyang this morning were chosen at random by computer; none are famous or distinguished. But, to the irritation of the Seoul government, the North Koreans have not adopted the same system. Many of their delegation are people of eminence and achievement - like Kim Ok-bae, North Korea's most famous dancer, and Oh Yong-jae, its leading poet. University professors, research scientists, an actor, a painter - for all the warming of relations between the two sides, the North is presenting only its most articulate, presentable and ideologically sound face.

For similarly murky political reasons, all the reunions will take place in a hotel, and Soon-hwan and his Northern compatriots will not be allowed to visit their family homes. "I stayed in this house, in this town, for 50 years, for that reason," says Mrs Lee. "So that if he came back, he could find us." But the North Korean government has seen too many of its people defect over the years to let them very far out of its sight. "The two governments have been working very hard to make this go like clockwork," says a Western diplomat in Seoul. "Neither of them want any hitches or embarrassments. We expect this week to be very emotional, but very, very controlled."

The South Korean Red Cross, which is organising the visit, has warned the relatives to be careful about what they present as gifts - no clothes with English phrases, nothing bearing the South Korean or American flags. For Soon-hwan, Mrs Lee has bought warm underwear and socks, towels and trousers. "We had to guess the size," she says. "I don't know how big my son is." But there is one unpredictable element for which no amount of forward planning can compensate.

The youngest of the visiting family members is 62; the two parties contain 23 octogenarians and three people in their nineties. Ambulances and doctors will be on stand-by in Seoul today, after a 90-year-old woman died after hearing that her 68-year-old son was finally coming to visit the South. Another man of 71 was hospitalised when it turned out that his 109-year-old mother had also died, a week after he had been informed that she was alive. Imagine, then, the effect of finally seeing a lost child or wife after 50 years, and then of seeing them disappear again, as all the visitors will on Friday. The question to be answered is how many of the lucky few will find happiness this week, and how many will discover that after 50 years, the joy of reunion is too much, much too late.