Two Koreas hold first family reunion talks in 2 yrs

(ATTN: UPDATES with delegation's arrival, ADDS expert's view)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea began talks Wednesday to arrange
reunions of separated families after a nearly two-year hiatus, as Pyongyang was
shifting to a conciliatory mode toward Seoul.

The reunion talks, channeled by Red Cross offices on both sides, had been stopped
as Pyongyang rejected inter-Korean dialogue.
"Our goal is to arrange reunions at Chuseok. We will also try to set up more
after that," Kim Young-chel, chief delegate and secretary general of the South
Korean Red Cross office, told pool reporters after arriving at the North's Mount
Kumgang Hotel, the venue of the talks.
Both sides hope to set up reunions by the traditional Korean holiday of Chuseok,
which falls on Oct. 3 this year, Seoul officials said earlier.
On Tuesday, North Korea restored a Red Cross hotline at the truce village of
Panmunjom that it severed in November to protest the conservative Seoul
government's hard-line policy toward it.
In another major fence-mending move, North Korea dispatched a high-level
delegation last week to pay their respects to the late former South Korean
President Kim Dae-jung, who died Aug. 18. The six-member team delivered a verbal
message to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak from the nation's leader, Kim
Jong-il, wishing for "progress in inter-Korean cooperation."
North Korean media have since stopped describing Lee in derogatory terms such as
"traitor."
In the first Red Cross dialogue in 21 months, three officials from each side will
try to set the date for a new round of reunions and the number of participating
family members, who have been separated since the 1950-53 Korean War, officials
said.
The North's scenic Mount Kumgang resort overlooking the East Sea has been the
venue of most of the 16 face-to-face reunions since 2000. Normally, about 100
South Koreans are selected for each round. Some 600,000 South Koreans are
believed to have relatives in North Korea.
Officials expect no problems in setting the date, but a major roadblock could be
the issue of Korean War prisoners and other South Koreans believed to have been
captured by the North during the Cold War era. South Korea has pushed to include
those missing citizens -- estimated at around 1,000 -- in family reunions, while
North Korea has said it was holding no one against their will and allowed only 25
of them to meet their South Korean relatives.
"Those are humanitarian issues. We will continue to express our opinion," the
chief delegate said.
Watchers expect that family reunions, when resumed, will help resuscitate other
inter-Korean ventures, particularly a suspended South Korean tour program to the
North's Mount Kumgang resort. Seoul banned the Hyundai-run tour in July last year
after a North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean tourist who strayed
into an off-limits military zone. The tour business, once a cash cow for the
North, now remains a major thorn in inter-Korean relations.
"North Korea agreed to resume the family reunions, which has been South Korea's
key demand. This will lead South Korea to reciprocate," said Cho Myung-chul, a
former North Korean university professor who defected to the South in the
mid-1990s. "Also, visits to the mountain will naturally build an atmosphere that
it is okay to reactivate the tour program," said Cho, now an analyst with the
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.
Family reunions were last held in October 2007 and did not continue after
political relations chilled with the inauguration last year of President Lee
Myung-bak, who linked inter-Korean relations to progress in Pyongyang's
denuclearization. The humanitarian event was initiated by the late Kim Dae-jung
and Kim Jong-il during their historic first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
Separately, South Korea called for the release of four fishermen who have been
held in the North after their boat strayed into North Korean waters in the East
Sea July 30.
Seoul pressed for an update on the crew through the restored inter-Korean
hotline, and a North Korean liaison official responded positively, Unification
Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said.
According to former government officials, who met the visiting North Koreans last
week, the North Korean officials told them that the fishermen would be released
soon.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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