Elderly North and South Korean family members allowed to meet for the first time in nearly seven decades prepared to bid each other farewell Wednesday, in all probability for the last time in their lives.

Millions of people were swept apart by the 1950-53 Korean War, which left the peninsula split by the impenetrable Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and separated brothers and sisters, parents and children and husbands and wives.

Over the years most have died, and fewer than 60,000 South Koreans remain alive who have registered to meet their Northern kin at the occasional reunions — this week’s are the first for three years.