However, families can also be divided if national boundaries remain unchanged, but instead groups of people or individuals are moved, forced to leave or flee.
Forced displacement such as flight from persecution, violence or a severe lack of public order can be causes of divided families.
All communication with their relatives, due to the Iron Curtain that divided the peninsula left many not knowing the whereabouts and well-being of their loved ones who remained behind in the North.
But after the 'armistice, the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), at the 38th parallel between North and South Korea, becomes the most heavily militarized border in the world.
Some divided families between South Korea and the Korean diaspora who live in Western countries were able to reunite.
100,000 Korean Americans are estimated to be members of a divided family, who still have kin living in North Korea.
The problems posed by these divided families is a pressing humanitarian issue that has been used for political ends by the governments on both sides of the 38th parallel north over the last five decades.
Following the historic summit of 2000 in Pyongyang, there have been several rounds of reunions, but the number of families affected remains low.
These figures clearly underline the pressing need for a solution to be found to this issue before the first generation of divided families finally disappear from the two Koreas’ societies, and the infringement of their fundamental human rights they have endured for so long becomes irreversible.”[3]“Clearly the most stressful psychological factor in their predicament is the uncertainty surrounding their loved ones’ fates.
In 1980 Choong Lim Chun, a Canadian, began to reunite divided families, including Korean Americans, after receiving a letter and picture of his older sister in 1979 from a security guard for North Korea's Olympic team, while working as a reporter for the New Korea Times.
Lim even travelled to Pyongyang, but was arrested for violating the National Security Act after she returned to the South through Panmunjom.
Section 1265 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, directed the President to report to Congress on family reunions between U.S. citizens and their relatives in North Korea.
3081 – State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill, 2010) "urges the Special Representative on North Korea Policy, as the senior official handling North Korea issues, to prioritize the issues involving Korean divided families, and to, if necessary, appoint a coordinator for such families."
In 2010–2011 the Divided Families Foundation restarted lobbying, and created an internship program with the 111th Congress and the Obama Administration Divided Families Foundation which partnered with the American Red Cross to deliver 3 Red Cross Messages to North Korea.