Two Koreas to hold first family reunion talks in 2 yrs

(ATTN: UPDATES with chief delegate's remarks on POWs, abductees)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Aug. 26 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean delegation headed to North Korea on
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.
"Many people are looking forward to reunions with their families north of the
border," Kim Young-chol, chief delegate and secretary general of the South Korean
Red Cross office, told reporters before departing from Seoul. "We will try to
have as many people as possible included in the reunions."
Seoul's three-member delegation 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.
The dialogue, the first in 21 months, follows an 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.
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.
Officials expect no major problems in setting the date and number of
participating families, but a major roadblock can be the issues of Korean War
prisoners and other South Koreans believed to have been held by the North during
the Cold War era. South Korea has tried to include those missing citizens in
family reunions, while North Korea opposed the idea.
"Those are humanitarian issues. We will continue to express our opinion," the
chief delegate said.
Watchers also 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)