20 October 2015•Update: 20 October 2015
By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
Kwon Oh-hee was the oldest among hundreds of South Koreans granted special permission to travel into the North on Tuesday, as eagerly anticipated family reunions got underway.
The 97-year-old made the short journey to a resort in the Mount Kumgang area to see her son -- cut off since the 1950-53 Korean War by the North-South border, which until now has proven to be an impenetrable divide.
The Koreas remain in a state of conflict, having never signed a peace treaty, although a breakthrough cooperation deal reached in August allowed the resumption of family reunions for the first time since early last year.
Even so, onlookers feared that any North Korean provocation might force the event to be abandoned, as has happened in the past.
Before the latest gathering, nearly 19,000 relatives from both sides of the border had been reunited in a stop-start process that has depended upon fragile inter-Korean cooperation since 2000.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of elderly applicants are still being kept waiting.
Around 390 South Koreans made up the first wave of arrivals this month, to be followed by 250 more later in the week.
The most popular gifts being brought from the South appeared to be warm clothes, nutritional supplements and medicine.
Five sisters, including 73-year-old Kim Yong-sun, also traveled to see their brother.
They could not even remember how they became separated during the war.
"I was surprised, thrilled to hear that [he] is looking for us. It's meaningful that all five of us could come [to see him] together," Kim was quoted as saying by local news agency Yonhap.
Relatives will each be granted six two-hour meetings to catch up on their years apart, before being divided again.
