Family reunions to resume between Koreas

North and South Korea agreed today to resume reunions of families separated when the countries split more than 50 years ago.

Families will get to speak by video link between the Koreas this month, with face-to-face meetings set for May, a South Korean official said.

The North had been expected to agree at this week’s talks to restart the reunions. It had put the reunions on hold last year after the South halted humanitarian aid to the North following missile tests by the communist nation in July.

In a final agreement after four days of meetings in Pyongyang, the North reiterated its commitment to a Feb. 13 international pact where it pledged to shut down its sole operating nuclear reactor within 60 days.

The South refused to restore humanitarian aid, such as rice and fertilizer, until the North makes progress on that pledge.

The sides will hold meetings on economic cooperation to discuss aid in late April -- after the deadline for the North to close its reactor.

South Korea has been one of the North’s main aid sources since the two nations held their first and only summit in 2000. But South Korea halted rice and fertilizer shipments to the North after it test-fired a barrage of missiles last July, and relations worsened following North Korea’s Oct. 9 underground nuclear test.

The reunions are a highly emotional issue between the North and South because many of those hoping to see relatives are elderly. Millions of Koreans were separated following the division of the Korean peninsula in 1945 and in the chaos of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The two Koreas also agreed today to conduct a long-delayed test run of trains on rebuilt tracks through their heavily armed border in the first half of the year.

A planned test last year was called off by the North, whose military had said appropriate security arrangements had not been made.

On Thursday, the South’s chief negotiator, Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung, met with North Korea’s No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, who reiterated his country’s pledge to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Kim said that “the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the dying wish” of the North’s founding president, Kim Il Sung, the father of current leader Kim Jong Il. North Korea “will make efforts to realize it,” he said.