Koreas hold first reunions via video

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SEOUL, South Korea - Hundreds of North and South Koreans held tearful reunions via video Tuesday as part of revived reconciliation efforts on the divided peninsula after the North agreed to start dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
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The reunions come weeks after the two sides agreed at high-level talks to put their relations back on track after they soured last year following the North's missile and nuclear tests.
Millions of Korean families were separated following the division of the Korean peninsula in 1945 and the 1950-53 Korean War. There is no direct mail, telephone service or other form of communication between ordinary citizens across the border, as the two Koreas remain technically at war.
The North halted the reunions last year after Seoul suspended its regular aid to Pyongyang after a series of missile tests.
Some 865 people from 120 families are participating in this week's virtual reunions, which are scheduled to last for three days. Each family will be given two hours to see and talk to their relatives via a fiber-optic video cable.
"I am glad to see you," said Jung Tae Young, 48, as he glimpsed his 65-year-old South Korean aunt Jung Sam-ok on Tuesday for the first time since the Korean War.
Jung and his South Korean relatives shared family pictures and asked each other about life on the other side of the peninsula.
Han Wan-sang, head of the South's Red Cross society, called on his North Korean counterpart to help the separated families by regularly holding reunions.
"Pains caused by division are enormous," Han told his North Korean counterpart, Jang Jae On, noting the urgency for the meetings because many seeking to see relatives are elderly.
Some 32,000 South Koreans died in the past decade without seeing long-lost relatives from the North, according to the South's Red Cross.
The two Koreas also plan to resume face-to-face family reunions at the North's Diamond Mountain resort in May, the 15th such scheduled since a 2000 summit between the leaders of North and South that launched their historic reconciliation. So far, more than 14,500 Koreans have met in such reunions.
The reunions coincided with a batch of resumed fertilizer shipments to the impoverished North in the wake of its agreement last month to shut down its main nuclear reactor by mid-April.