Koreas plan video reunions

North and South Korea on Monday connected fiber-optic cable lines across their heavily fortified border to allow families -- separated for decades since the Korean War -- to "meet" through video conferences.

Workers from the two Koreas met on the southern side of the border to connect the cables running from Munsan in the South to Kaesong in the North.

Twenty families from each side will meet through the video circuit around August 15, in conjunction with celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

"Re-linking the cable lines ... will contribute greatly to future inter-Korean exchanges," said Maeng Soo-ho, an official

from South Korean telecommunications company KT, according to pooled news reports.

"We have laid the foundation for accelerating inter-Korean exchanges," said Kim In Chol, a North Korean postal and communications official.

Next month the two Koreas will hold a face-to-face reunion of Korean families, separated since the 1953 end of the Korean War, at North Korea's Diamond Mountain tourist resort.

Ten previous reunions have been held since June 2000, when the leaders of the two Koreas held their first-ever summit.

Of the 120,000 people in South Korea who seek to be reunited with relatives in the North, most are elderly and fear they may not have enough time to wait much longer for the reunions.