North Korea agrees to family reunion talks with South

North Korea has agreed to a proposal for talks on resuming reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 war on the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang says it is ready to take part in the talks on Wednesday or Thursday at the border truce village of Panmunjom.

“We welcome that the North has finally come forward to discuss the reunion,” Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-Do told reporters on Monday.

Kim also said that Seoul “will make preparations to hold the reunion as soon as possible.”

He added that South Korea would notify North about the date of the meeting.

Last week, Seoul said that it proposed holding family reunions in mid-February at a North Korean Mount Kumgang resort.

Family reunions have not been held since October 2010.

Millions of Koreans have remained separated since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

About 71,000 South Koreans, more than half of them elders aged over 80, are on Seoul’s waiting list to participate in a reunion session, which hosts only around 100 people on each side.

The two neighbors share one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders. The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of escalating military rhetoric since the Korean War.