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South Koreans enter North for family reunion

Lee Sun-Gyu (L), an 85-year-old South Korean, smiles with her North Korean husband Oh In-Se (R), 83, during a family reunion meeting at the Mount Kumgang resort on the North's southeastern coast on October 20, 2015. (AFP photo)

Hundreds of South Koreans have entered a resort inside North Korean territory for a new round of family reunions.

A convoy of buses carrying some 400 South Koreans, many of them elderly, crossed the militarized border between the two countries and ​entered the resort of Mount Kumgang on the North's southeastern coast on Tuesday.

The Koreans will stay in the North for three days with their relatives they last saw more than six decades ago.

The meeting, the second such reunion in the past five years, came following an agreement between the two Koreas in August to ease tensions.

In September, the two Koreas agreed that reunions would be held during October 20-26, after hours of negotiations in which they said they would work to “fundamentally resolve humanitarian issues.”

The last reunion took place in February 2012.

Millions of people were displaced and many families permanently separated after the 1950-53 Korean War, which divided the peninsula.

As the conflict concluded with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, the two Koreas technically remain at war and direct exchanges of letters or telephone calls are prohibited.


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