Kim Byung-dae, the ministry's humanitarian cooperation bureau director, and other officials head to the North from the Inter-Korean Transit Office, Wednesday. Through Friday they will inspect facilities at Mount Geumgang, where separated family reunions will take place in August. / Yonhap

By Kim Bo-eun

South Korean officials arrived at Mount Geumgang in the North Wednesday, to check facilities there for upcoming reunions of separated family members.

A total of 20 officials of the unification ministry, Red Cross as well as Hyundai Asan and its subcontractor will stay there through Friday, to check the conditions of the hall for reunions as well as accommodations at hotels and tourist and power generating facilities.

"We will carefully inspect the facilities so that the reunion of separated family members can take place successfully," Kim Byung-dae, the ministry's humanitarian cooperation bureau director, said at the Inter-Korean Transit Office before heading to the North.

After the officials return, South Korea will start sending workers to begin repairing the facilities in the North.

The facilities have been abandoned for close to three years since the last reunion took place in October 2015.

Last week, the Koreas agreed at Red Cross talks to hold reunions for family members separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War, from Aug. 20 to 26.

The Koreas will begin confirming surviving family members on July 3 and exchange the final list of participants by Aug. 4.

The reunions were arranged to follow up on the agreement in the Panmunjeom Declaration reached at the inter-Korean summit in April.

Resuming the reunions had been a pressing issue because most of the surviving family members are now in their 70s or older.

Among the 131,531 who have registered with the government, 57,920 of them are still alive.

The first reunion was held in 2000, after the first summit between a South Korean president and North Korean leader ― Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il.

Since then, 19 more events enabled around 20,000 people to meet with their long lost relatives ― but that is only 15 percent of the total number.

Voices have grown recently to increase the number of participants for each event, as they are elderly. At the reunions in August, 100 participants each from the South and North will take part. Each member is able to meet with up to five family members.

The South Korean government is also seeking to enable the family members to visit their hometowns in the North, as well as enable them to exchange letters, as a means to keep in contact, rather than simply hosting a one-off event. The Red Cross is set to hold additional talks to continue discussions on reunions as well as other humanitarian issues.

Some thorny issues that remain to be dealt with is the six South Koreans who are currently detained in the North, and 12 North Korean restaurant workers who are known to have defected to the South but may have been kidnapped. Each side is calling for their nationals to be repatriated.