N. Korea considering family reunions for Korean-Americans

By Kim Kwang-tae
SEOUL, Aug. 11 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said Thursday it is considering holding a reunion of Korean-Americans with family members they left behind in the North decades ago, a rare conciliatory gesture toward Washington.
North Korea's "Red Cross Society is positively examining the issue from a humanitarian viewpoint" in response to recent U.S. proposals for talks to discuss the reunion of separated families, a spokesman for North Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
"If both sides promote cooperation, beginning with such humanitarian issues, it will help build mutual confidence required for solving complicated problems in the future," he said in a comment carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
The comment came days after the U.S. State Department expressed support for family-to-family contacts between Korean-Americans and their relatives in the isolated communist country.
Millions of Koreans have been separated from their family members since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
Some of them later settled in the United States, though it is not known exactly how many Korean-Americans left behind family members in the North during the war, according to South Korea's Red Cross.
U.S. Red Cross officials were not immediately available for comment.
Pyongyang has long sought to improve relations with the U.S. and sign a peace treaty with Washington to formally end decades of enmity since the war. The U.S. keeps some 28,500 troops in South Korea to deter the North's possible aggression.
The North's conciliatory move came more than a week after its senior diplomat met with his American counterpart in New York on how to resume long-stalled talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
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