AFP, SEOUL: Nearly 400 mostly elderly and frail South Koreans held a tearful, emotionally fraught reunion Tuesday with family members in North Korea, more than 60 years after they were separated by the Korean War.
After crossing the heavily militarised border in a convoy of buses, the families from the South were driven to meet their relatives in North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort.
Moving video footage broadcast on South Korean TV showed divided brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, step-siblings and in-laws seeking each other out among numbered tables in the resort's main hall and then collapsing into each others' arms. For Lee Jeong-Sook, 68, the moment brought her face-to-face with her 88-year-old father, Ri Hong-Jong, who she was separated from when she was just two years old.
Ri was brought into the meeting room in a wheelchair and promptly burst into tears at the sight of his younger sister, Lee's aunt, who rushed towards him shouting: "Brother!" "This is your daughter. This is your daughter," his sister said, pointing to Lee. Seemingly overcome by the moment, Ri just nodded and squeezed his sister's hand before asking for news of other family members in the South. "Almost all died in the war," she answered. Millions of people were displaced by the sweep of the 1950-53 Korean conflict, which saw the front line yo-yo from the south of the Korean peninsula to the northern border with China and back again.