Nearly 8 out of 10 South Korea families torn apart by the 1950-53 Korean War said their top priority should be placed on confirming whether their family members in North Korea are alive, a government survey showed Thursday.

Seoul's unification ministry said 76.3 percent of separated family members said it is important to check the survival of their kin in North Korea in a bid to resolve the issue of separated families.

Holding family reunions on a regular basis ranked second with 10.3 percent, followed by exchanges of letters with 4 percent, the poll showed.

The survey was conducted on about 6,100 separated family members on a waiting list for the family reunions from April-October. There are about 130,000 on the list with roughly half of them having already passed away.

The poll showed that 77 percent of those surveyed raised the need to spur exchanges with North Korea over the separated family issue.

Out of these, nearly 52 percent said that the state-arranged family reunions should be prioritized, but other face-to-face meetings should be pushed forward, including meetings with North Korean relatives in a third country through a broker.

The ministry then said that the average age of South Korean separated family members reached 80 for the first time this year.

Under relevant laws, the government is required to conduct a survey of separated families every five years to check whether they are alive and want to meet their relatives in the North.

The two Koreas remain technically at war as the Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

The two sides have held 20 rounds of such reunions so far, but there are still thousands waiting their turn.

In October 2015, the two Koreas held their first family reunions since February 2014. But they have failed to hold such events so far this year amid North Korea's continued nuclear and missile provocations. (Yonhap)