Returnees Get a Big Welcome
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PANMUNJOM, Korea — Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans poured into the streets Saturday to welcome 63 former Communist spies and guerrillas--some on stretchers and in wheelchairs--returning home after decades in South Korean prisons.
South Korea repatriated the aging ex-convicts across the heavily armed border Saturday in another step toward rapprochement with the North. Later in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, huge crowds standing in neat lines waved red flags and pink paper flowers as buses carrying the returnees drove through the city’s main boulevards.
The scene played on Northern TV footage monitored in Seoul, the South’s capital.
On the northern side, the former spies had tearful reunions with family members, said the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
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