They laughed, wept, clung, and shared memories as they met long-lost relatives they hadn’t seen in decades. Then, later, away from the cameras, they cried in mourning, knowing they would never meet again, even briefly.

The emotions of the South Koreans whom I saw in Seoul nearly 25 years ago at their first reunion with family members from North Korea were palpable. They were seated at separate tables for each family in a cavernous auditorium as cameramen and photographers jostled for shots and reporters pestered for quotes.

It was just three months after South Korea’s president, Kim Dae-jung and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-Il, had staged the first North-South Korean summit in Pyongyang in June 2000.  They agreed they would arrange for families divided by the Korean War to see one another for the first time since the fighting ended in a heavily armed truce in July 1953. 

Now, a generation later, Mr. Kim is demolishing the spacious hotel and reunion center, built by South Korea’s Hyundai Construction at the base of the granite crags of Mount Kumgang, Diamond Mountain, several miles above the North-South line. South Koreans had been going there for all the reunions since the first few in Seoul after Mr. Kim decided he didn’t want his people returning with tales of the sights of the South Korean capital on which they’d been taken on quick city tours.

It’s the end of an era, in which these annual gatherings became a national catharsis for a war that divided a nation of about 75 million people — 50 million in the south and 25 million in the north. A generation ago, I covered a south Korean woman in her 50s who met her mother from the North and said, “I’ve been missing you even in my dreams.” Her mother, in her 70s, responded: “I’m happy beyond words. It’s so good I have lived to see my daughter.” 

Barely conveying the outburst of emotions, one man told me he had registered to go to the North well before the North-South summit. “It’s like I won the lottery, only it’s better,” he said. Among the millions of divided families, most have died. Of the 134,000 South Koreans who signed up when the program was first announced, fewer than 20,000 got to see their relatives. About 36,000 are still alive — dwindling at the rate of a few thousand a year.

By the time of the last of 20 such gatherings in August 2018, it was obvious the North Korean regime saw the reunions as a mighty bargaining tool in fitful negotiations over the North’s nuclear program.  North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, the son of Kim Jong-il, had agreed on that final reunion after a hiatus of several years after seeing President Trump in Singapore two months earlier.

Every North Korean knew what to say before exchanging memories. Each of them sang the praises of Kim Jong-un, whose generosity, they had to repeat, had made possible such a miraculous occasion. They knew big brother was listening, tapping the line through devices installed in every room.

Officially, South Korea was not too concerned about the eavesdropping. Tearing down the venue for the reunions, though, was another matter, the latest affront in a series that included blowing up the flossy North-South liaison building in June 2020, built by Hyundai just above the Demilitarized Zone. Five months ago, Mr. Kim decided to destroy North-South rail links that Hyundai had built in 2003.

The South’s unification ministry, responsible for the tours from the South’s side, denounced demolition of the reunion center as “an inhumane act that tramples on the earnest wishes of separated families.” As Mr. Kim freezes all North-South contact and turns to his alliance with Russia’s President Putin, the fantasy of another reunion has vanished.

A woman, Lee Kyong-hee, told me she had visited her sister, who had disappeared from their home in Seoul after North Korean troops seized the city in June 1950. Her sister, she discovered, had had  to work as a nurse for wounded North Koreans. “We were lucky,” she said. “There are so many who have family members across the border.”

Some, though, wondered about the welcome that awaited them. “I don’t even know for sure if my sister can meet me,” an old man told me before one of the reunions. “I don’t feel excited at all. Everybody’s dying.”