Koreans prepare for rare reunion

Sitting on the floor, with her suitcase in front of her, 100-year-old Kim Yu-jung is preparing for a remarkable journey.

Surrounded by four of her children, the youngest of them now in his late 50s, she is packing some winter clothes for the colder weather in the North.

The family is one of a small number given a rare chance to meet their long-lost relatives from the other side of the border that cuts this peninsula, and the lives of its people, in half.

Mrs Kim is going to meet the daughter she last saw more than half a century ago.

Lee Hye-gyong, then just 16 years old, was separated from her family in the chaos of war, and ended up living in the north.

For six days, from 26 September, 200 families, half from the North and half from the South, will travel to a mountain resort in North Korea for their reunions.

Their names have been selected at random from the tens of thousands on the waiting list.

In the early part of this decade the meetings were held regularly and, caught on television cameras, they are a powerful reminder of the continuing humanitarian cost of Korea's division.

The programme is not without its critics, who say it allows North Korea to play politics with people's lives by deciding when they will, or will not, take place.