IMAGINE yourself in the condition of a 92-year-old mother seeing her 72-year-old son after an interval of 68 years. Or in the role of a 70-year-old woman who keeps asking her 100-year-old father whether he recognized her. Such were the tearful scenes one witnessed at the Diamond Mountain resort in North Korea last week. They were among a group of 83 elderly North Koreans who gathered at the resort for a three-day reunion with their South Korean relatives.

Members of families divided during the Korean War, they were meeting for the first time after South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong Un signed a declaration in April this year to facilitate such reunions. The event went until Wednesday, giving families a total of 11 hours to spend together over three days, including a three-hour private meeting and lunch, before being separated once again.

Monday’s meet was the first of its kind since 2015, after which tensions increased between the Koreas and reunions were halted.

Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War. The Korean Peninsula was split by the impenetrable Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives.

Government figures from March show that 131,447 South Koreans have registered as separated families since 1988. However, over 70,000 have since passed away, and a quarter of those still alive are over 90 years old. They are waiting to be selected by a computerized lottery for the next round of reunions, which is yet to be scheduled. We should remember that nine South Korean family members had to back out of the reunions for reasons connected with age and health.

In all, about 20,000 people have participated in 20 rounds of reunions since 1985, when the first such gatherings were organized. The humanitarian program has always been subject to political moods. Pyongyang has been reluctant to expand the program, fearing the impact that meetings with affluent South Koreans might have on its impoverished population. The North has also used such reunions to extract concessions from the South in other fields.

But it will be unfair to blame only the North for the suspension of reunions or delay in organizing them. America’s dispute with the North over the latter’s nuclear program and the rise in tension in the Korean Peninsula too plays a part. This means a North-South rapprochement alone wont solve the problems of divided families. The US will not allow the South to get too close to the North. There are fears, not unjustifiable, that the North may try to use its friendship to create a wedge between the South and US. A rapprochement between US and the North depends on an impossible condition — CVID or complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization by the North. This is a condition no country with an advanced nuclear program will agree to.

Whatever the reasons and whoever responsible, the agony of the families on both sides of the border continues. And it will so long as the peninsula remains divided and the North and South continue to be technically at war. The unification of the North and South is not likely in the foreseeable future. An official end to the Korean War, something thousands of Koreans have eagerly been awaiting for decades, also remains a distant dream.

So the only way to end the agony of the divided families to some extent is for the two Koreas to find ways to institute regular and larger reunions and to create more diverse forms of reunions, including video chats and correspondence. The stipulation that those selected for reunion will not get another chance to meet relatives should also be done away with. If Kim and Moon Jae-in can meet frequently, why not the unfortunate people on either side of the border?