NORTH / SOUTH KOREA: 3 DAY FAMILY REUNIONS

(30 Nov 2000) Natural Sound XFA QUALITY AS INCOMING A group of elderly South Koreans, some of them in wheelchairs, arrived in North Korea on Thursday for a three-day reunion with their families for the first time in half a century. A Korean Air aeroplane carrying the hundred southern visitors, landed at Sunan Airport outside the North's capital, Pyongyang. The mostly 70 year-olds had a one-hour flight that skirted the west coast of the divided Korean peninsula. The South Korean plane returned to Seoul the same day with an equal number of North Koreans. The pictures being transmitted from Pyongyang showed emotional scenes as families who had not scene each other for almost fifty years finally set eyes on their loved ones - but only for a few days. This is the second family reunion since August and it's the result of warming relations between North and South. In June the two countries held a summit to overcome their enmity and work toward reconciliation and reunification. Since then North and South have stopped propaganda broadcasts, they've held cabinet-level talks and started work on reconnecting a cross-border railway that was cut off just before the 1950-53 Korean War. Relations between the U-S and North Korea are also improving. The August reunions lasted four days, this week's reunions were cut by one day to save costs, organisers said. The South Korean delegation includes 15 men who were hoping to meet their first wives, whom they left behind in the North when they escaped to the South. In the South, they remarried. South Korea finalised its list of visitors through a computer lottery involving 90-thousand candidates. North Korea selected mainly citizens who are loyal to the political system - including state-decorated academics - to meet their separated families. An estimated one point two (m) million North Koreans escaped to South Korea during the Korean conflict. Thousands of South Korean natives went to North Korea, some of them conscripted into its communist army. The inter-Korean border is sealed and heavily fortified. There is no telephone, mail and other direct means of communications for ordinary citizens between the two sides. One of the South Koreans heading to Pyongyang, 80-year-old Song Bong-soon, left her one-year-old son with her mother in the North and came to Seoul to study to become a midwife before the Korean War. Her husband escaped to Seoul during the war, but the baby was left behind. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...