The South Korean government announced on Monday that it would allow citizens over the age of 65 with relatives in North Korea to visit the North as long as they could show an invitation and a letter guaranteeing their safety, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

"The government gives priority to the family reunions among its North Korean policy goals and will pinpoint seven concrete tasks to facilitate them," Lee Jong-riol of the Unification Ministry told the news agency.

He said the government had nominated a Reunion Promotion Committee for 10 million family members divided during the Korean War, which would offer financial support to those aged over 60 to enable family reunions in third countries like China .

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.