Koreas to begin final day of talks on family reunions

By Kim Hyun
MOUNT KUMGANG, North Korea, Aug. 28 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea will enter
their final day of negotiations Friday on reunions of families separated by the
Korean War, with Seoul demanding renewed efforts by Pyongyang to locate prisoners
of war and missing civilians.
Over the past two days at the North's Mount Kumgang resort, the Koreas reached a
tentative agreement to hold family reunions, the first in nearly two years,
around the traditional holiday of Chuseok that falls on Oct. 3 this year. At
issue is Seoul's agenda on South Korean prisoners of the 1950-53 war and
civilians believed to be held in the North. Pyongyang insists it holds no one
against their will.
Specific dates and venues for the reunions have yet to be set, but Seoul
officials were optimistic those minor differences will be narrowed by the end of
the three-day talks.
"The issue of these people whose whereabouts became unclear during and after the
Korean War must be included in our agreement," a South Korean delegate to the
talks told pool reporters Thursday.
Family reunions, handled by Red Cross offices on both sides, were stopped in late
2007 amid deteriorating political relations. North Korea boycotted inter-Korean
dialogue after President Lee Myung-bak came to power 18 months ago, taking a
tough stance on North Korea's nuclear program and suspending unconditional aid to
the impoverished state.
The conservative Lee government has been more outspoken than its liberal
predecessors about the North's human rights conditions, particularly issues of
South Korean POWs and citizens who were allegedly kidnapped -- mostly fishermen
-- during the Cold War era. Seoul estimates about 1,000 of them are still held in
the North.
Since family reunions began in 2000 as an outcome of the first inter-Korean
summit that year, North Korea has located only 25 of them to be temporarily
reunited with their South Korean families.
Seoul is demanding a "new format" to resolve those issues, but the specifics of
its proposal were not available yet.
"Rather than being specific, we are proposing that the two sides put into a
(written) agreement that we together will give more weight to these issues," the
South Korean delegate told pool reporters.
Seoul also wants to hold family reunions on a regular basis, considering the
approaching deaths of many elderly applicants. For a single round, each side
chooses 100 people to reunite with their relatives from the other side of the
border. About 600,000 South Koreans are believed to have relatives in the North.
Ordinary people are not allowed to exchange phone calls or emails across the
border.
North Korea insists that the ongoing talks focus on the main agenda of setting up
the date and venues for the upcoming round of reunions, Seoul officials said.
South Korea proposed holding the reunions Sept. 27-29 and Oct. 6-8, while the
North proposed holding them Oct. 3-5 and Oct. 6-8.
For the venue, Seoul proposed a 12-story building it built last year for the
reunions at Mount Kumgang, but Pyongyang insisted on the Kumgangsan Hotel, where
this week's talks are being held.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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