A South Korean participant waves before leaving from Sokcho on the east coast for a reunion event for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War at the Mount Kumgang resort on North Korea's east coast Monday. Pool Photo by Yonhap

Paek Seong-gyu, 101, the oldest South Korean to reunite, heads to a bus to leave from Sokcho for a reunion for relatives separated by the 1950-53 Korean War at the Mount Kumgang resort on North Korea's east coast Monday. Pool Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- South and North Korean families who were separated during the Korean War have reunited after more than six decades.

The reunions began on Monday at North Korea's scenic Mount Kumgang resort between 89 South Koreans and their family members from the North, according to South Korea's unification ministry.

The South Korean families were selected by computer lottery from some 500 candidates to attend the reunion. More than 131,000 people are registered as separated family members in South Korea, according to the government.

Families will spend three days together -- Monday to Wednesday -- in the first round of reunions. The event, taking place for the first time since 2015, is part of a pledge by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their summit in April.

Families will attend a total of six reunions, including a group reunion and a welcoming dinner hosted by the North on Monday, followed by an individual reunion and lunch on Tuesday and a farewell lunch on Wednesday.

Only seven families are reuniting with their immediate family members, like parents and children. Others are meeting close relatives, as their immediate family members have died of old age, according to Yonhap.

Half of the South Korean attendees are between 80 and 89 years old and 38 percent are more than 90 years old.

The oldest attendee is a 101-year-old man from the South, who is meeting his North Korean daughter-in-law and granddaughter, Yonhap reported.

The second round will run from Friday to Sunday, with 83 North Koreans expecting to reunite with their family members from the South.</s>Dozens of family members separated during the Korean War have been reunited after decades apart.

An estimated 10 million people are believed to have been separated from their families between 1950 and 1953, with tens of thousands of those still alive having applied for reunions.

Reunions between those in the North and South remain rare occurrences, with 20 such events held since 2000 according to BBC.

Earlier this year the leaders of the two countries agreed to a fresh round of reunions.

Today, 89 family members from the South travelled to the Mount Kumkang resort in North Korea for the first reunions since 2015.

One 99-year-old woman - Han Sin-ja - met the two daughters she lost while fleeing decades ago, and 92-year-old Kim Dal-in is said to have met his younger sister who has been living in the North.

The South Korean government said 101-year-old Baik Sung-gyu was the oldest person to attend the event, meeting his daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

The first meeting lasted for two hours, with two more days of events planned before the South Koreans return home.

83 North Koreans, meanwhile, are set to meet their families living in the South later this week, with the meetings set to take place at the same resort in the North.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has called for the reunions to be expanded.

He observed: “I sympathise deeply with the separated families, being from one myself.

“They must take steps to expand not only regular family reunions, but also video conferencing-based reunions, around-the-clock reunions, letter exchanges and visits to hometowns.”</s>SEOUL – Scores of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily-guarded border to the North on Monday for emotional reunions with relatives they had not seen for more than 65 years.

The 89 South Koreans, mostly in their 70s and 80s and some in wheelchairs, traveled by bus from the port city of Sokcho to a resort in Mount Kumgang on North Korea’s east coast to meet with family members they were separated from by the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.

Local television carried footage of the encounters, showing the South Koreans slowly making their way into the resort's ballroom, clutching weathered photographs and breaking down as they encountered their long-lost relatives.

Lee Keum-seon, 92, was reunited with her son Sang-chul, who was only four years old when they were separated by the chaos of the war. "I went out to the river and cried every day for a year," Lee said before setting out for the trip to North Korea. "He won't recognize me now."

The mother and son clutched hands and pressed their faces together when they finally met, wiping away tears, their faces a mix of disbelief and wonder. The scene was echoed around the room as brothers, sisters, parents and children encountered relatives who had been lost for almost an entire lifetime.

Many of the South Koreans did not have any surviving direct family members, and met with cousins, nephews and nieces and in-laws — often for the first time.

The participants were chosen by a lottery, with the oldest being a 101-year-old man.

For most remaining separated families, time is running short.

About 57,000 South Koreans are registered with the Red Cross to participate in the reunion program, and more than 60 percent of them are older than 80.

Over half of the 132,000 people who originally registered for the reunions have died and 3,500 to 3,800 more on the list pass away every year — about 10 people a day – according to the Korean Red Cross.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in called many family members who have died without having a chance to meet their relatives “a shame for both the South and the North governments.”

Moon called for accelerating the process of reunions, as well as more contact such as exchanging letters and visiting hometowns.

“The waiting should not be longer,” he said. “Expanding and speeding up the reunion of separated families is among the top priority for humanitarian projects that North and South Korea should do.”

Over three days, the reunited families will have six meetings, with most of their encounters heavily supervised. Only a single lunch meeting will be in private.

A second round of reunions will be held at the resort from Thursday to Sunday, in which 83 North Koreans who were selected will meet with relatives from the South.

Monday’s reunion was the first since October 2015, when the program was halted over rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula. A dramatic thaw in relations this year led to this week’s event, which came about as part of the agreement struck between Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their historic April summit held in the border village of Panmunjom.</s>SEOUL, South Korea — The 92-year-old South Korean woman wept and stroked the wrinkled cheeks of her 71-year-old North Korean son on Monday. It was their first meeting since they were driven apart during the turmoil of the 1950-53 Korean War.

"How many children do you have? Do you have a son?" Lee Keum-seom asked her son Ri Sang Chol during their long-awaited encounter at the North's Diamond Mountain resort.

The emotional reunion came after dozens of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea to meet temporarily with their relatives. The weeklong event, the first of its kind in nearly three years, was arranged as the rival Koreas boost reconciliation efforts amid a diplomatic push to resolve a standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Hugging the woman he'd last seen when he was 4, Ri showed his mother a photo of her late husband, who had stayed behind in North Korea with him after being separated from his wife while fleeing south. "Mother, this is how my father looked," Ri said.

Before leaving for North Korea, Lee said she wanted to ask her son "how he grew up without his mom and how his father raised him."

Most of the participants in the reunions are in their 70s or older and are eager to see their loved ones once more before they die. Most have had no word on whether their relatives are still alive because they are not allowed to visit each other across the border or even exchange letters, phone calls or email.

"How are you so old?" Kim Dal-in, 92, asked his sister, Yu Dok, Reuters news agency reports. "I've lived this long to meet you," the 85-year-old said as she wiped away tears.

About 90 elderly South Koreans, accompanied by their family members, will have three days of meetings with their North Korean relatives before returning to the South on Wednesday. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.

During Monday's meeting, many elderly Koreans held each other's hands and wiped away tears with handkerchiefs while asking how their relatives had lived. They showed photos of family members who couldn't come to their meetings.

Han Shin-ja, a 99-year-old South Korean woman, was at a loss for words after she reunited with her two North Korean daughters, both in their early 70s. Not knowing their separation would be permanent, she left them behind in the North during the war while fleeing south with her third and youngest daughter.

She could only say "Ah" and "When I fled..." before choking up with tears.

Kim Sun Ok, an 81-year-old North Korean woman, said she found that she and her 88-year-old brother from South Korea resembled each other a great deal. "Brother, it would be really good if Korean unification comes. Let's live together even at least one minute after unification before we die," the woman said tearfully.

Before this week's reunions, nearly 20,000 people had participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000. Another 3,700 exchanged video messages with their North Korean relatives. None have had a second chance to see or talk with their relatives.

Moon Hyun-sook, 91, said she gathered clothes, cosmetics and medicine to give to her two sisters, Reuters reports. "Whenever I saw pretty clothes, I always thought how cute they would look in them," she said.

During the three years since the reunions were last held, North Korea tested three nuclear weapons and multiple missiles that demonstrated they potentially could strike the continental United States.

North Korea has shifted to diplomacy in recent months. Leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a son of North Korean war refugees, agreed to resume the reunions during the first of their two summits this year in April.

South Korea sees the separated families as the largest humanitarian issue created by the war, which killed and injured millions and cemented the division of the Korean Peninsula into the North and South. The Unification Ministry estimates there are currently about 600,000 to 700,000 South Koreans with immediate or extended relatives in North Korea. More than 75,000 of the 132,000 South Koreans who have applied to participate in reunions have died, according to a ministry record.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday reiterated that time is running out to expand the reunion program, saying it would be a "shameful thing" for both Koreas to see many elderly people dying without even finding out whether their loved ones are still alive.

Moon attended a 2004 reunion to meet his aunt. "As a separated family member, I deeply share their sorrow and pitifulness," he said during a meeting with his aides.

North Korea is reluctant to accept calls for more reunions. Analysts say it sees the reunions as an important bargaining chip and believes more reunions would give its people a better awareness of the outside world. While South Korea uses a computerized lottery to pick participants for the reunions, North Korea is believed to choose based on loyalty to its authoritarian leadership.</s>PHOTOS: Separated North And South Koreans Meet For 1st Time In Decades

Cascades of tears. Lingering hugs. Family photos. And questions that have burned unanswered for decades.

For the first time in three years, North and South Korea are holding family reunions, allowing a small number of South Koreans to travel across the fortified border to the North to reunite with loved ones they haven't seen since the 1950s.

Such reunions have been held intermittently since the '80s, and have resumed as relations between the North and South are thawing.

For the families involved, it's an extraordinary moment. In general, there is no contact permitted between North Koreans and South Koreans, and many members of separated families do not even know if their relatives across the border are still alive.

The Associated Press reported from Seoul:

"The 92-year-old South Korean woman wept and stroked the wrinkled cheeks of her 71-year-old North Korean son on Monday, their first meeting since they were driven apart during the turmoil of the 1950-53 Korean War. " 'How many children do you have? Do you have a son?' Lee Keum-seom asked her son Ri Sang Chol during their long-awaited encounter at the North's Diamond Mountain resort. ... "Hugging the woman he'd last seen when he was 4, Ri showed his mother a photo of her late husband, who had stayed behind in North Korea with him after being separated from his wife while fleeing south. 'Mother, this is how my father looked,' Ri said. "Before leaving for North Korea, Lee said she wanted to ask her son 'how he grew up without his mom and how his father raised him.'

Many of the reunions involve elderly family members reuniting with siblings; few parents are still living to be reunited with their children.

Reuters reports that some of the reunified relatives struggle to recognize their family members:

Before the reunions were held, NPR's Michael Sullivan and Se Eun Gong spoke to several South Koreans who were preparing for the visit.

Ahn Seung-Choon was 14 when her 17-year-old brother was taken by North Korean soldiers. She later fled south with her mother, who did not survive the trip. Sullivan and Gong report:

"She never stopped wondering what had happened to her brother. Some 30 years ago, she went to her county office in Jecheon, southeast of the capital Seoul, and put her name on a list of other Koreans wanting a chance for rare, short-term family reunions granted intermittently since 1985. "Of 132,000 South Koreans who registered with the government since 1988, some 57,000 are still alive, hoping to meet their long-lost loved ones before it's too late. No more than 100 South Koreans are given the opportunity to take part in each reunion. ... "As the decades passed, Ahn pretty much forgot about her own request — until she got a phone call earlier this month. She'd been chosen in the lottery to visit her brother in the North. " She was thrilled. But two days later, Ahn got another call. Her brother, it turned out, had already died. But he had left a family, and his wife and son were willing to meet."

Ahn traveled north to meet her nephew, saying, "I should go see him before I die."

This week, 93 families were supposed to be reunited, but four families had to cancel because of poor health, Reuters reports, citing the Red Cross. All told, some 330 South Koreans are meeting 185 North Koreans, the wire service says.

The families will be meeting for 11 hours, spread out over three days.

A second round of reunions will be held Thursday, according to Reuters, with 88 more families involved.

On Morning Edition on Friday, Sullivan noted that 75,000 South Koreans have died while waiting for the chance to see their family members.

"The lucky ones are the ones who have been reunited," he said. "But the rest who are still waiting, we don't know what's going to happen to them."

The AP reports that North Korea is "reluctant to accept calls for more reunions."

"Analysts say it sees the reunions as an important bargaining chip and believes more reunions would give its people a better awareness of the outside world," the news service writes. "While South Korea uses a computerized lottery to pick participants for the reunions, North Korea is believed to choose based on loyalty to its authoritarian leadership."</s>Dozens of elderly South Koreans have crossed the border into the North to meet relatives for the first time since they were driven apart during the 1950-53 Korean war.

Dozens of elderly South Koreans have crossed the border into the North to meet relatives for the first time since they were driven apart during the 1950-53 Korean war.

Emotional scenes as separated Korean families reunited for the first time in decades

There were emotional scenes as the reunions took place in the North's Diamond Resort, as the rival Koreas step up reconciliation efforts.

One 92-year-old South Korean woman wept and stroked the wrinkled cheeks of her 71-year-old North Korean son.

As they met, Lee Keum-seom asked her son Ri Sang Chol: "How many children do you have? Do you have a son?"

Hugging the woman he'd last seen as a child, Mr Ri showed his mother a photo of her late husband, who had stayed behind in the North with him as a boy.

The week-long event is the first of its kind in nearly three years, and was arranged as part of diplomatic efforts to resolve a stand-off over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Most of the participants in the reunions are in their 70s or older and are eager to see their loved ones once more before they die.

Most have had no word on whether their relatives are still alive because they are not allowed to visit each other across the border or even exchange letters, phone calls or emails.

About 90 elderly South Koreans, accompanied by their family members, will have three days of meetings with their North Korean relatives before returning to the South on Wednesday. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul's unification ministry.

During Monday's meetings, many elderly Koreans held each other's hands and wiped away tears while asking how their relatives had lived. They showed photos of family members who were not able to attend the meetings.

Han Shin-ja, a 99-year-old South Korean woman, was at a loss for words after she reunited with her two North Korean daughters, both in their early 70s.

Not knowing their separation would be permanent, she had left them behind in the North during the war while fleeing south with her third and youngest daughter.

Before this week's reunions, nearly 20,000 people had participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000. Another 3,700 exchanged video messages with their North Korean relatives. None of them had a second chance to see or talk with their relatives.</s>SEOUL, South Korea — Dozens of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea on Monday for heart-wrenching meetings with relatives most haven't seen since they were separated by the turmoil of the Korean War.

The weeklong event at North Korea's Diamond Mountain resort comes as the rival Koreas boost reconciliation efforts amid a diplomatic push to resolve a standoff over North Korea's drive for a nuclear weapons program that can reliably target the continental United States.

The temporary reunions are highly emotional because most participants are elderly people eager to see their loved ones once more before they die. Most of their families were driven apart during the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still in a technical state of war.

Buses carrying about 90 elderly South Koreans and their family members were moving into the Diamond Mountain resort after crossing into North Korea. Earlier in the morning, the South Koreans, some in wheelchairs and aided by Red Cross workers, had left the buses briefly to enter the South Korean immigration office in the eastern border town of Goseong.

They were to reunite with their long-lost North Korean relatives on Monday afternoon at the start of a three-day reunion. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.

Past reunions have produced powerful images of elderly Koreans crying, embracing and caressing each other. Nearly 20,000 people have participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000. Another 3,700 exchanged video messages with their North Korean relatives under a short-lived communication program from 2005 to 2007.

No one has had a second chance to see their relatives.

Many of the South Korean participants are war refugees born in North Korea who will be meeting their siblings or the infant children they left behind, many of them now into their 70s.

Park Hong-seo, an 88-year-old Korean War veteran from the southern city of Daegu, said he always wondered whether he'd faced his older brother in battle.

After graduating from a Seoul university, Park's brother settled in the North Korean coastal town of Wonsan as a dentist in 1946. After the war broke out, Park was told by a co-worker that his brother refused to flee to the South because he had a family in the North and was a surgeon in the North Korean army.

Park fought for the South as a student soldier and was among the allied troops who took over Wonsan in October 1950. The U.S.-led forces advanced farther north in the following weeks before being driven back by a mass of Chinese forces after Beijing intervened in the conflict.

Park learned that his brother died in 1984. At Diamond Mountain, he will meet his North Korean nephew and niece, who are 74 and 69, respectively.

"I want to ask them what his dying wish was and what he said about me," Park said in a telephone interview last week. "I wonder whether there's a chance he saw me when I was in Wonsan."

During the three years since the reunions were last held, the North tested three nuclear weapons and multiple missiles that demonstrated they potentially could strike the continental United States.

North Korea has shifted to diplomacy in recent months. Leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a son of North Korean war refugees, agreed to resume the reunions during the first of their two summits this year in April.

South Korea sees the separated families as the largest humanitarian issue created by the war, which killed and injured millions and cemented the division of the Korean Peninsula into the North and South. The ministry estimates there are currently about 600,000 to 700,000 South Koreans with immediate or extended relatives in North Korea.

But Seoul has failed to persuade Pyongyang to accept its long-standing call for more frequent reunions with more participants.

The limited number of reunions cannot meet the demands of divided family members, who are now mostly in their 80s and 90s, South Korean officials say. More than 75,000 of the 132,000 South Koreans who have applied to participate in reunions have died, according to the Seoul ministry.

Analysts say North Korea sees the reunions as an important bargaining chip and doesn't want them expanded because they give its people better awareness of the outside world. While South Korea uses a computerized lottery to pick participants for the reunions, North Korea is believed to choose based on loyalty to its authoritarian leadership.

Chang reported from Goseong, South Korea. AP writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>“Sang Chol!” 92-year-old Lee Keum-seom exclaimed, as she fell into her long lost son’s arms at a holiday resort in North Korea Monday.

Lee had been waiting 68 years for this moment, after the two became separated during the Korean War and became trapped either side of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which now splits the two Koreas.

Sang Chol was four when she last saw him. He is now 72, himself an old man. On Monday he sat waiting for Lee’s arrival with his daughter-in-law. Lee was joined by her two daughters, who grew up in South Korea.

Theirs’ was one of multiple emotional family reunions taking place at a resort near Mount Kumgang, where buses full of South Koreans drove early Monday.

They were the 89 lucky families selected from the more than 57,000 who had applied for the reunions, agreed to under the Panmunjom Declaration signed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during an historic summit earlier this year.

More than 60% of those seeking reunions are over 80 years old, and are being accompanied on the bus trip north by their children and other relatives.

After the initial tearful reunion was over, Sang Chol showed his mother a photo of her husband, who had been with their son when the couple became separated but has since died.

“This is a photo of my father, mom,” Sang Chol said, dissolving into sobs.

Before she left for the bus trip north on Monday, Lee told CNN she had prayed for her son to have a long life so the pair could reunite.

“(My family) in North Korea didn’t live long so I prayed for my son’s health,” she said.

She felt nervous about meeting her now elderly son, after only knowing him as a small child, unsure about where to start catching up on a lifetime spent apart.

“What shall I ask?” she said. “Oh, I should ask him what his father told him about me. His father must have told him about how we got separated and where our house used to be. I should ask him about that.”

On seeing him however, there was no hesitation, and the two elderly Koreans embraced each other tightly, both in tears. During the whole reunion, they did not let go of each others’ hands.

Lee was one of dozens of South Koreans who gathered Sunday at the Hanwha resort hotel, in Sokcho, south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which separates the two Koreas, where medical checks were carried out and participants were warned about nuances of visiting North Korea. They’re told to avoid saying anything that could be misconstrued, or considered insensitive north of the border.

Participants were applauded by Red Cross workers as they arrived, some in wheelchairs, passing under banners reading “We sincerely congratulate the reunions of the separated families!”

In the hotel there was an air of excitement and tension as they prepared to meet husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and children who are now only vague memories, their faces blurred by time.

They then registered their names and were invited to take a professional family photo in a corner of the lobby. It was then framed for them so they could then take it to North Korea as a gift.

Park Kyung-seo, president of the South Korean Red Cross, told CNN that while he was overjoyed to be assisting in family reunions, the small number of those taking part was a “human tragedy.”

“I share fully with the disappointment of those who are not selected so I am trying with North Korean partners to try and find other solutions, huge numbers are waiting, the numbers are very much limited,” he said.

“Imagine 73 years long without knowing whether their family members are still alive or passed away — no news at all. The agony and anger, that’s an unthinkable human tragedy.”

In a statement Monday, President Moon urged both Koreas to work towards more reunions in future, noting his own family history as the child of North Korean refugees.

“Expanding and expediting the reunion has the utmost priority out of all the humanitarian projects that both Koreas must conduct. The Koreas must more boldly make an effort towards solving the divided families issue,” he said. “As a member of a divided family myself, I sympathize deeply with that sadness and pain. There really is no time”

Ahn Seung-chun was headed to North Korea to see family members she’s never met. “I applied to see my older brother,” he said. “But he passed so I’ll never see him now.”

“I’m going to see my nephew and my brother’s wife,” she added. On one hand, I’m sad that I won’t see my brother. But on the other hand, I’m happy to meet the nephew. At least I will be meeting a fruit of my father.”

In the decades since the Korean War, the Red Cross has reunited many families but thousands of others have missed out.

As family members age, each delay adds to fears that they’ll no longer be around to finally meet with their long lost relatives. More than 75,000 applicants have already passed away since the reunion process began.

One protester attended Sunday’s event to voice his elderly father’s case for a reunion, after the man was unlucky this round.

“I don’t know when he will die. He is beginning to show signs of dementia. Before he loses everything, he wants to go too,” Kim Seong-jin said. “But all he can do is to watch through television each time and get hurt.”

Amid all the joy and happy scenes on both sides of the border this week, this is the reality for most whose families remain split by the Korean War.

“My father is all alone here in the South. Can you imagine how much he misses his family?” Kim said. “He wants to hear the news of his hometown before he dies.”

The pain felt by the families split by the Korean War is one of the most visible legacies of the conflict which, 68 years after it began, still hasn’t technically ended.

An armistice agreement which paused fighting in 1953 never became a formal peace treaty, and small skirmishes have happened since on either side of the heavily fortified DMZ, even as North Korea has built up its nuclear armaments and the US has maintained a heavy military presence in the South.

Officially ending the war was a key element of the Panmunjom Declaration, and both North and South have said they are continuing to work towards that goal, even as negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington appear to have stalled.

North Korean state media called on the US to agree to an official end to the war last week, saying it was a “preliminary and essential process to pave the ground for detente and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

“The U.S. should implement phased and simultaneous measures, like the end-of-war declaration, to build mutual trust and make a breakthrough in the security of the world,” state media Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary.

As well as the family reunions, Saturday saw the fulfillment of another commitment made by Moon and Kim, as a joint Korean team marched in the opening ceremony of the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia.

That move came after a unified Korean team took part in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea earlier this year, negotiations over which helped kick start a breakthrough in North-South relations and lead to the current detente on the Peninsula.</s>A group of South Koreans has traveled to border ahead of reunions with relatives in North after being separated by war

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A group of South Koreans has traveled to border ahead of reunions with relatives in North after being separated by war.</s>SEOUL, South Korea — A mother wails as she embraces a son she hasn't seen since the 1950-53 Korean War. A woman weeps as she greets a grandfather she never got to know.

The scenes of Koreans meeting this week, likely for the last time before they die, are heartbreaking, but they often bely a highly political and tightly controlled event in which participants often struggle to have genuine conversations.

Much of the awkwardness centers on the defining fact of the Korean Peninsula: For decades it has been divided between the authoritarian North, originally backed by the Soviet Union and then, during the war, communist China, and the U.S.-backed capitalist South. Citizens from both nations, especially the elderly who remember the bitterness and bloodshed of the war, often wear their nationalism on their sleeves, and some South Koreans have complained that their relatives take every chance to score propaganda points for their authoritarian nation.

After the initial tears at North Korea's Diamond Mountain resort, Cha Jae-geun, an 84-year-old South Korean, and his 50-year-old North Korean nephew began an awkward exchange over international politics surrounding the Korean Peninsula and the origins of the war that split their family apart and killed and injured millions.

The Koreas should "drive the American bastards out," Cha Song Il, the nephew, said, according to South Korean pool reports. He accused the United States of being unfaithful to the commitments of a June summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, in which they expressed an aspirational goal for a nuclear-free peninsula without describing when or how it would occur.

The elder Cha reminded his nephew that it was North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader, who triggered the war by ordering a sneak attack on the South in June 1950.

"That's a lie," the nephew replied, waving both hands. "The Korean War was something the Americans did. "We fought against (our enemies) with our own strength."

Cha Jae-geun smiled and quickly changed the subject, as South Korean officials urge their reunion participants to do if politics come up. South Korea's government instructs participants not to criticize the North's leadership and economy during the reunions.

Some North Korean participants, who are reportedly chosen for the reunions based on their loyalty to their authoritarian rulers, were eager to show their government commendations to their South Korean relatives. In at least once case, this resulted in another awkward exchange.

Ju Yong Ae, a 52-year-old North Korean who came to meet her 86-year-old South Korean aunt, steadfastly refused when a South Korean official who had come to the North to help manage the meeting repeatedly asked her to put her "Kim Il Sung commendation," a public service medal, below the table.

"How can you put down our supreme dignity?" Ju asked.

A North Korean official intervened, telling the South Korean official, "She's just trying to show it to her family; leave her alone."

About 200 South Koreans and their family members crossed the border on Monday for three days of meetings with their North Korean relatives. The relatives have been given a total of 12 hours together, including three hours in private. Another 337 South Koreans and accompanying family members will participate in a second round of reunions from Friday to Sunday.

South Korean participants at past reunions have complained that the heavy monitoring presence of North Korean officials and intense media coverage made genuine conversations difficult or impossible.

The North sees the reunions as a crucial tool to win concessions from the South, but it has rejected the South's demands to increase the number of reunions and the people participating in them.

The North also ignores the South's proposals for letter exchanges and hometown visits, something currently banned. Pyongyang doesn't want the reunions expanded because it fears they would give citizens a better awareness of the outside word and weaken its grip on power, analysts say.

The North uses the reunions for propaganda purposes, carefully choosing participants based on loyalty and instructing them to praise the authoritarian leadership during the meetings. But Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said it could become harder for the North to maintain previous levels of control because the participants are so old now that it's harder to train them to do what the government wants.

Nearly 20,000 people have participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions held between the countries since 2000. No one has had a second chance to see their relatives. Past participants express frustration and anger that their final conversations with North Korean relatives included so little genuine conversation.

Hong Yong-gee, who went with his mother for a 2015 reunion at Diamond Mountain and met his three North Korean aunts, said Tuesday that it seemed his North Korean relatives were working off a script.

"They praised the leadership of Kim Jong Un and life in North Korea so frequently that any genuine conversation became impossible," Hong said. "It was difficult for my mother and aunts to talk freely when several North Korean officials stationed themselves so close to our table, listening in to whatever we were saying."

Choi Ho-seok, 83, also said that his 76-year-old sister kept praising the North's government when they met in 2015 under the watchful eyes of North Korean officials.

"There were things closer to our hearts that we couldn't talk about because we were being watched closely at all times," he said. "It would be painful if that's the last time I get to see her."
Eighty-nine South Koreans are selected via lottery to be reunited for three days with North Korean relatives they were separated from in the Korean War six decades earlier.