A convoy of buses carrying 435 South Koreans crossed into North Korea yesterday for a brief reunion with relatives over the heavily fortified border, despite tensions after an exchange of fire.
The reunions, which give divided families the first chance to see one another in six decades, started at mid-afternoon at the Mount Kumgang resort on the North’s southeastern coast, near the border.
North and South Korean troops on Friday briefly exchanged fire across the frontier, heightening tensions before next month’s G20 summit of world leaders in Seoul. No casualties were reported.
Im Jae-ok, 76, said she would see her brother for the first time in 61 years.
“My heart is brimming with joy,” she said, adding that she was carrying two bags of clothes and some US dollars as gifts for her brother, now aged 80.
Lee Moon-yeong, in his 70s, said he had spent a sleepless night in anticipation of seeing one of his brothers after so many years apart with no chance of any communication.
He had previously feared the brother might have been killed in action after joining the North Korean army during the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
“Brothers were fighting against brothers. What a tragedy it was,” he said.
Lee’s second brother died in 1952 while fighting for the South.
South Koreans from 97 families will spend three days with 97 relatives in North Korea from whom they were separated by the war.
Following the meetings yesterday, today and tomorrow, another batch of 96 South Koreans will be reunited with 207 North Koreans from Wednesday to Friday at the same place.
The emotional meetings, the first since September last year, come despite icy inter-Korean ties in the aftermath of the North’s -alleged torpedoing of a South Korean warship, for which the North angrily denies responsibility.
Seoul rolled back the previous government’s policy of reconciliation and has taken a tougher stance toward the communist state, linking badly needed food and fertilizer aid to progress in talks on dismantling the North’s nuclear program.
On Friday, the North fired toward a South Korean guard post and South Korean soldiers there immediately returned three shots from a machine gun, a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman in Seoul said.
“The reunions will go ahead as scheduled despite the firing,” South Korean Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said, as Yonhap news agency confirmed the families had crossed the border into the North.
Two bullets from the North landed on the lower part of the wall of a South Korean guardpost, but no South Koreans were hurt in the incident.
It marked the first time that shots have been fired from the North across the border since the conservative government of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak replaced a liberal government in February 2008.
The Dong-A Ilbo daily quoted an unidentified South Korean official as saying that a North Korean machine gun, always trained toward the South, might have accidentally fired. Such accidental firings occurred occasionally, it said.
“Things are quiet there today,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman said.
Yonhap news agency said the US-led UN Command, which has been staying in the South since the UN fought alongside the South against the North and China during the Korean War, would investigate the case in the coming week.
The shooting, in the Hwacheon area 90km northeast of Seoul, comes as the South prepares to host the G20 summit on Nov. 11 and Nov. 12.
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