What does one say to a mother or a brother one has not seen for 50 years? Words failed many Koreans at emotion-charged family reunions yesterday in Seoul and Pyongyang, capitals of South and North Korea, and they simply cried and hugged in fierce embraces.
The get-together of families cruelly torn asunder by the 195053 Korean War was tangible evidence that the June summit between the leaders of the two Koreas was indeed a harbinger of the end of the peninsula's bitter cold war.
A North Korean aircraft took 100 people south to Seoul in the morning to meet relatives assembled in a convention centre under the glare of television lights, and the same aircraft took 100 South Koreans to Pyongyang.
"I have never dreamed I would come back here in my life," said Mr Han Jae-il (82) as he stepped down from the aircraft in the North Korean capital, which he had not seen since he was 32. In Seoul, Mrs Chung Sun-hwa (95) from South Korea collapsed and required medical attention on meeting her son for the first time in 50 years.
"I thought all of you were dead," said a North Korean man when he met his two elderly sisters in Seoul. Many frail and ailing relatives did not recognise each other and relied on numbers.
Typical of yesterday's meetings was that of Dr Kim Jong-tae and his brother. He graduated as a doctor from Seoul National University and was visiting his brother when the war broke out in 1950. He rushed to his army unit and was never heard from again until tracked down by the Red Cross.
No Cold War border was as absolute as that drawn along Korea's 38th parallel in 1953. More than one million people fled to South Korea as the North came under communist control after the second World War, and many southerners defected to the North after the Korean War.
Apart from the reunion of 50 families in 1985, few relatives were ever able to make contact or even find out if parents, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts and cousins were alive or dead. A total of 76,000 South Koreans applied to go to North Korea, testimony of the extent of the nation's cleavage, and 100 were chosen by lottery.
The North's delegation was more political in its make-up, with prominent figures from the arts and science. It was led by Mrs Yoo Mi-young (78), the widow of a former South Korean foreign minister who defected in 1986.
The reunions, which will continue in private for another three days, were agreed by President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea and the North Korean leader, Mr Kim Jong-il, at their June summit in Pyongyang. Mr Kim Jongil has not given his agreement to further reunions, only hinting to visiting South Korean media executives at the weekend that more would be held.
The publishers and editors were invited to lunch with Mr Kim, and released an agreed account of their conversation. This revealed that the North Korean leader may have been joking in his reported proposal to President Putin of Russia in July to stop missile development.
He said, according to their account: "I told President Putin if the US can launch a satellite for us then we will not develop rockets", adding: "We were talking about such a subject laughingly." Mr Kim, who also confessed he would rather be a film director, said: "Why should I need to court bigger countries? If I sit here in Pyongyang, many from powerful nations come to me."
The South Korean President yesterday proposed a meeting between the two Korean defence ministers to seek ways to reduce military tensions.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the 55th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, President Kim also said South Korea would propose standing committees on military, economic, social and cultural affairs with the North and a military "hotline" at the next ministerial-level talks on August 29th in Pyongyang.
Work will begin next month on relinking railways cut during the war. Mr Kim Jong-il told the South Korean media executives that 35,000 soldiers would repair the North's side of the railway. The South Korean President said in his speech: "Through these railways, Korea will be connected with Europe via China and Russia, through the two lines of the Iron Silk Road. Korea, located at the eastern tip of the Asian continent, will then find itself at the centre stage of the global community. We are now ushering in the era of Korean Peninsula."
The combination of the South's technology and capital and the North's labour and natural resources could propel the 70 million Koreans "to a great takeoff", he said.
The President also approved a sweeping amnesty to mark Liberation Day. More than 30,000 people convicted of crimes were affected, including 1,101 political prisoners, most of whom were convicted of espionage or other activities linked to North Korea.