Ending a weeks-long deadlock, South and North Korea agreed Friday to hold the reunions of families separated by the Korean War from Oct. 30-Nov. 5 at two venues inside their joint mountain resort in the North, a South Korean official said, Yonhap News reported.

The previous two rounds on Aug. 17 and 24 bogged down due to disagreement over the venue for the reunions.

The North demanded the South resume cross-border tours to its scenic eastern mountain resort before a Seoul-financed building there can be used for the reunions. Seoul refused to tie the reunions to the tours that came to a halt when a South Korean tourist was shot dead in July 2008 after apparently wandering into a restricted area.

The talks, participated in by two South Korean Red Cross officials -- one doubling as a government official -- came a day after the divided countries failed to produce progress in their first meeting of military officials in two years.

Tension has run high between the states since South Korea blamed North Korea in May for the sinking of its warship. Forty-six sailors died in the incident that Pyongyang denies any role in.