Ageing South Koreans meet families in North after seven decades apart
Reunions have resumed as relations between the two Koreas thaw, but most of the survivors who signed up to meet their relatives separated by the Korean War, have died
Sokcho — Dozens of elderly and frail South Koreans met their Northern relatives on Monday for the first time since the peninsula and their families were divided by war nearly seven decades ago. The three-day reunion is the first for three years and follows a diplomatic thaw on the peninsula. The meetings began at Mount Kumgang, a scenic resort in North Korea, Seoul government officials said. Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War, which separated brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives. Hostilities ceased with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war and the peninsula split by the impenetrable Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), with all direct civilian exchanges — even mundane family news — banned. The 89 ageing South Koreans, dressed in their best suits in the scorching sun, hobbled one by one to 14 coaches in the South Korean port of Sokcho — wheelchairs alongside the vehicles — some excited an...
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