Elderly S. Koreans set to visit North for family reunion

SEOUL, Aug. 19 (Yonhap) -- A group of 89 elderly South Koreans gathered at a resort in a northeastern coastal town on Sunday to travel to the North for a temporary reunion with their war-separated families. The Koreas will hold two rounds of meetings at the Mount Kumgang resort on the North's eastern coast this week for the first time since October 2015. The first batch of South Korean participants will be reunited with their families from Monday to Wednesday. The second round will be held Friday to Sunday. They arrived at the Hanwha Resort in Sokcho, 158 kilometers away from Seoul, early in the morning. They will spend the day there being briefed on the procedures and protocols for the event, according to the Ministry of Unification. During each of the two three-day reunion sessions, the families are expected to have some 11 hours of face-to-face meetings, according to the ministry. Reuniting families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War was part of the agreement by the leaders of the two Koreas during their historic summit in April. The South and North finalized the list of participants early this month. The two Koreas have held 20 rounds of face-to-face family reunions since the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000. The two Koreas technically remain at war as the Korean War ended only with an armistice, not a peace treaty. (END)