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. 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. 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. "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.' 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. “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. 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. 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. 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.
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.