ARIRANG NEWS 20:00 Koreas hold new round of reunions for war-separated families

Title: Koreas hold new round of reunions for war-separated families A fresh round of reunions for war-separated families got under way at North Korea's Mt. Kumgang on this Monday. For more, we are joined in the studio by our Hwang Sung-hee. Sung-hee, you returned Saturday from Mt. Kumgang after covering the first round of reunions. Give us an idea of what's happening on the second day of the reunions. Good evening, Conn-young. On the second day of the reunions, the families have three chances to reunite -- individual meetings in the morning, a group luncheon and a group meeting in the afternoon. The individual meetings are held behind closed-doors - with no media or government officials present- so this is when the families really have a chance to catch up and talk freely. I noticed that up until the individual meetings, the atmosphere was a bit subdued, since the decades of separation do make the families feel a bit awkward around each other at first. But after the individual meetings, the mood picks up and the families get a bit chattier during the group luncheon. Things start to get emotional and teary during the final few minutes of the group meeting on the second day of the reunions because some families begin to worry about the next day, which is the last day of the event. Although the event runs for three days, the families only have a total of 11 hours together and on the final day, they only meet for an hour in the morning before bidding farewell. And how is the new round of reunions different from the first round? The first round was composed of 82 South Korean divided family members who applied for the event and around 1-hundred-50 North Koreans. The new round was arranged by North Korea, with 88 North Korean divided family members who were hand-picked by the party and over 3-hundred South Koreans. So the current reunion is much larger in scale. But all families at the reunion event have heartbreaking stories of their own. For one man, the last time he saw his daughter was when she was one-year-old, but now she has turned into a 61-years-old woman. This family is actually the only parent-child reunion at the new round of reunions, which is a reminder that time is running out for the aging divided family members to see each other again and that there is a need for these meetings to be held on a regular basis. This is the first time in more than three years that the two Koreas have held reunions for war-separated families and so far, it looks like things are going smoothly. Can we take this as a sign that inter-Ko