600 Families in North, South Korea Exchange Mail
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SEOUL — North and South Korea exchanged mail for 600 families Thursday, the first contact in more than 50 years for the relatives.
The exchange marks a small step toward healing decades of pain for the families, long separated by the world’s most fortified border.
“We exchanged 300 letters from each side with North Korean officials at Panmunjom [the border village in the demilitarized zone] after checking their names and addresses,” said a spokesman for South Korea’s International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Red Cross plans to post the letters from the North to South Korean families today. But some people rushed to the Red Cross building in Seoul, the South’s capital, in hopes of getting their mail early.
“I came here to get the mail from my brother in the North on behalf of my mother who is 100 years old and sick in bed,” said Kim Min Ha, 69, senior vice president of the Advisory Council on Democratic and Peaceful Unification.
“My mother is senile and maybe won’t comprehend the letter. But I would read it to her anyway. She has been waiting for it for decades,” he said.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, leaving the two nations with an uneasy truce.
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