The Korean War has left a deep wound in the Korean people as a whole as well as many families. Some people who fled the war in the severe confusion became scattered across the nation and have endured over 70 years of being separated from their own family members without knowing whether they are alive or not.

D uring the Korean War, about 380,000 civilians were killed, 230,000 injured and more than 300,000 people went missing. More than 2.6 million people became refugees. As the Communist Chinese troops became involved in the war at the end of October in 1950, the U.N. troops retreated from North Korea in early December and retreated even further down from Seoul on the 4th of January 1951. As a large number of people fled for safety to the south, many people went missing and lost contact with their families during the process. It is estimated that about 0.6 to 1 million people originally from North Korea ended up becoming displaced people due to the war.

However, there have been continuous efforts to resolve the separated family problem by helping families ascertain the life or death of inter-Korean separated families, open correspondence between such families, hold reunion events, in pursuit of reconciliation and cooperation between the South and the North.