N Korea opens tightly sealed border for aid

A convoy of 40 orange-colored 25-tonne trucks pulled across the mine-strewn no-man's-land that has separated the two countries for more than 50 years from this railhead on the southwestern end of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

A separate convoy of 40 trucks crossed into North Korea with another rice shipment at the eastern end of the DMZ, officials said.

"Pass," shouted two South Korean military policemen here as they opened an iron-grid gate in a barbed wire-fence for the convoy to enter the four-kilometer (2.5-mile)-wide buffer zone in place since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The 80 trucks were to return home later Tuesday after unloading their cargo at Kaesong City in the west and at the eastern port of Kosong. Both Kaesong and Kosong are about an hour's ride from the DMZ.