SEOUL, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Hundreds of North and South Koreans met on the weekend in the first of several mass family reunions planned this week in North Korea.
More than 430 South Koreans, from 97 families and aged 12 to 60 years, were bused across the demilitarized zone – the border -- to North Korea's resort of Mount Kumgang on coast of the Sea of Japan.
The three-day visits are being organized with the help of the International Red Cross which provides the facilities, including tents and food for families. Hundreds of families have been permitted reunion meetings since they began in 2000.
But this week's politically sensitive reunions are the first since October 2009 for the two countries that remain officially at war since signing a cease-fire in 1953. The cease-fire, which ended three years of fighting, divided the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel that has acted as the nearly 155-mile border and created the two countries.
The 5,400-foot Mount Kumgang in the Kumgangsan tourist region, is around 30 miles from the border and 133 miles north of Seoul and 130 miles east of Pyongyang.
The resort was opened in 1998 and is an important hard currency earner for the cash-strapped North. The official money is the U.S. dollar and most of the staff are ethnic Chinese and few North Koreans work there in the hotels and restaurants that were developed by Hyundai Asan, based in South Korea but a trusted business partner of the North.
Hyundai Asan is the property development division of South Korean conglomerate Hyundai Group, also the maker of automobiles. HA is a major investor in North Korea, managing and, apart from the resort, manages road and rail buildings and operations. It also is the main developer behind the Kaesong Industrial Park project, a special economic zone in the North close to the border where South Korean firms are allowed to set up a business to take advantage of cheap labor.
Hyundai Asan is in protracted discussions with the North Korean government to expand the Mount Kumgang site with a ski resort and a golf course.
UPI