Two Koreas to hold first family reunion talks in 2 yrs

SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean delegation was to head to North Korea
Wednesday for talks to arrange a new round of reunions of separated families
after a nearly two-year hiatus, a sign of thawing cross-border relations.
The reunion talks, channeled by Red Cross offices on both sides, had been stopped
as Pyongyang rejected inter-Korean dialogue. The North's agreement to the
three-day talks was the latest in its series of recent conciliatory gestures
toward the South.
"Given the agreement with the Hyundai chairwoman, we don't see any big problems
in setting the reunion date," Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said
Tuesday.
Lee was referring to a recent agreement North Korean leader Kim Jong-il reached
with Hyun Jeong-eun, chief of South Korea's Hyundai Group, to boost joint
ventures and resume suspended reunions of families separated by the 1950-53
Korean War. The accord suggests holding the reunions on the traditional Korean
holiday of Chuseok, which falls on Oct. 3 this year.
Seoul's three-member delegation, led by Kim Young-chol, secretary general of the
South Korean Red Cross office, will travel to Goseong, South Korea's border town
on the east coast, where they will cross the demilitarized zone through an
inter-Korean land route there at around 3 p.m., officials said. The talks are to
be held at the North's Mount Kumgang resort, a customary venue for the reunions.
Arranged by the Red Cross, the reunions started at the end of 2000 as an outcome
of the historic first inter-Korean summit earlier that year. They 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 two Koreas have held 16 rounds of face-to-face reunions and seven rounds of
video reunions so far, temporarily bringing together tens of thousands of
people. About 600,000 South Koreans are believed to have relatives in North
Korea. Normally, about 100 South Koreans are selected for each reunion.
Watchers expect that during the talks, North Korea may demand the resumption of
the suspended tourism project to Mount Kumgang, a source of cash for the country
currently under U.N. sanctions. Seoul suspended the 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.
Seoul has not moved yet to resume the tour.
Philip Goldberg, a U.S. diplomat in charge of enforcing sanctions on North Korea,
recently expressed support for the Mount Kumgang tours and other inter-Korean
business projects, saying they would not violate the U.N. resolution that
punishes the North for its nuclear test.
"My assessment is that at the moment, these are issues outside of that
resolution," he said during a visit to Seoul.
In a major fence-mending move, North Korea dispatched a high-level delegation to
pay respects to late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung last week.
North Korean media have since stopped calling South Korean President Lee
Myung-bak derogatory names like "traitor."
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)