North and South Koreans’ reunited

Four South Korean soldiers,believed to be killed in action in North Korea, were alive and were able to  meet their family members from the South.Relatives divided since 1953 were reunited for the first time Saturday at a South Korean-built tourism resort in North Korea amid tensions between the two sides.On Friday, the day before the reunions were due to begin, North Korean troops fired two bullets at a South Korean guard post. Southern soldiers returned three rounds, and are demanding an explanation via the United Nations Military Armistice Commission. But the incident has not affected the reunions.Seoul has been making the reunions a regular event, But in recent talks on the matter, the North has demanded 500,000 metric tons of rice and 300,000 metric tons of fertilizer to make the meetings a monthly event.

Elderly men in suits and women in traditional Korean silk hanbok dresses sat at numbered tables in a large restaurant,Many burst into tears, some sat, spoke and exchanged photographs,others looked bewildered as they clutched hands and stared into faces unseen for six decades,The relatives have been separated from another since the Korean War.”We have held a memorial service for you every year,” South Korean Yi Jong-sool told his North Korean elder brother,Yi Jong-ryeol, 90. “I can’t believe you are alive.”Our mother was waiting for you, but she died last year,” South Korean Yi Yun told his older brother Yi Hwa-chun, 81. “If only she had lived one more year.””Goh Yoon-sob, 81, from North Korea met his son Koh Bae-il, 63, from the South, they  were separated when the son was three years old,The men clutched hands and exchanged photographs.Koh Bae-il appeared speechless as his father spoke to him.

The oldest of the South Koreans, Kim Lye-jong, 96,hugged her North Korean daughter, Woo Jong-hye, 71.Some 436 South Koreans, ranging in age from 12 to 96, met 97 family members from North Korea. But some planned reunions did not go ahead,some relatives had died in the past couple days, while others were too ill to attend.The meetings, which stretch over three days, will be bittersweet, the chances of any of the divided family members meeting again are slim.The tragedy of the divided families dates to the Korean War, when the Cold War’s division of the peninsula into two nations became  permanent.