Relatives from family separated by Korean War meet for 1st time in 3rd country

Two relatives from a family separated by the 1950-53 Korean War met for the first time in a third country in September, marking a rare reunion amid frozen inter-Korean relations. Tensions remain high on the divided Korean Peninsula as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ruled out talks with South Korea and defined inter-Korean ties as those between "two states hostile to each other." The meeting came five months after South Korea's Unification Ministry received a request from a North Korean member of a separated family seeking help to find a maternal uncle in South Korea. The request was relayed to the ministry by a North Korean defector living in the South. The ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, located the uncle in its database of separated families, only to learn that he had died 30 years earlier. After trying to contact the uncle's adult children using information in the database, a ministry official made contact with a 65-year-old cousin living in Gyeonggi Province near Seoul. The South Korean cousin readily agreed to contact the North Korean relative, saying the cousin's