SEOUL - NINETY-SEVEN South Koreans on Saturday had tearful reunions with more than 200 relatives whom they had not seen for almost 60 years, as a North-South humanitarian programme resumed after a two-year hiatus.

Sobbing relatives hugged each other tight, mostly speechless with emotion as the reunions at the North's Mount Kumgang resort near the inter-Korean border were shown on South Korean TV.

'Don't you have anything to say to me?' said Mr Chung Dae Chun, who at 95 is the oldest person to take part in the three-day event, as he was reunited with his son, who is hearing-impaired.

Tears that had been held back for almost 60 years streamed down the face of Ms Kim Hye Kyong, 83, who met her daughter for the first time since they were separated during the Korean War.

'I have been feeling guilty since I left you when you were only three years old,' Ms Kim told her daughter.

'Don't worry, mother. I am well off here,' the daughter replied calmly, holding her mother's hands in hers. Ms Kim brought her daughter a traditional Hanbok Korean costume that she had made herself.

Mr Lee Kwae Seok, 79, was conscripted into the South Korean army during the Korean War and listed as killed in action before he was recently found alive in the North.

'I failed to be a filial son for my parents but I always miss them so much,' he said after he met a South Korean brother who told him that their parents had already died.

'I'm so overwhelmed by emotions. I cannot even shed tears.'

The reunion programme, which started in 2000, had been suspended for two years as ties between Pyongyang and Seoul's conservative government deteriorated. The communist state has agreed to resume them as part of a series of recent peace overtures. -- AFP, REUTERS, AP