As relatives - divided for more than half a century by the Korean border - are briefly reunited, BBC News Online looks at some of the stories behind the photographs.

"I heard that you had a mistress when you were living with me. Isn't she your wife? Did you bring her with you here?", a tearful Chung Gwi-up, 75, asked her long-lost husband, Lim Han-un, 74, while holding his hands.

Gwi-up had refused a second marriage and supported her parents-in-law after her husband disappeared during the Korean War.

Hwang Sun-ok left her sick daughter, Kim Sun-sil (right), in the care of relatives in the North, but was prevented from ever collecting her child after the border was sealed after the war.

On their reunion, Sun-ok produced a ring and a necklace she had carefully kept as wedding gifts for her daughter. "Mother, it's a bit too late but thank you," smiled Sun-sil.

"Sister Shin-ho! Sister Shin-ho! You are alive," her younger South Korean sister Bu-ja, cried, as they embraced. She attended the reunion in the place of their 93-year-old mother, who died two days ago.

"Until the moment of her death, our mother could never close her eyes peacefully without seeing you," Bu-ja told her sister. Lee Shin-ho sobbed as she knelt in front of a portrait of their mother.

One of Bu-ja's relatives repeatedly praised North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and was heard to say: "It's the Yankees alone who have forced us to live apart."

All smiles as South Korean Yun Kum-chul meets his long lost North Korean sisters.

Soon they were up and dancing.

These relatives, briefly brought together after decades apart, will probably never see each other again