More than a dozen South Korean officials will visit North Korea this week to prepare for the upcoming family reunion event, the Unification Ministry said Wednesday.
Families split by the 1950-53 Korean War and continued division of the Korean Peninsula are scheduled to reunite in special meetings to be held at Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast from Oct. 20-26. It’s part of a deal reached at high-level talks in late August that deescalated heightened military tension at the time.
The 14-member advance team, led by a senior Red Cross official, plans to cross the border at noon on Thursday for the one-day mission. It will inspect the venue and fine-tune a specific timetable for the meetings, related logistics and other details, according to the ministry.
Around 200 elderly South Koreans will be given a rare chance to meet their families in the communist North in the first inter-Korean family reunions since February 2014.
The border between the two Koreas remains tightly sealed as they are technically at war. The Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)
