SKorea Red Cross chief offers new talks on separated families.

12/1 Tass 66

SEOUL, January 12 (Itar-Tass) - The chief of South Korea's Red Cross,
Yoo Jong-ha, on Tuesday offered his colleagues from North Korea to conduct
shortly negotiations on the resumption of reunions of families separated
in the Korean War of 1959-1953.

He believes it is very important to help elderly people achieve their
cherished dream - meet their relatives whom they have not seen for over
half-a-century.
Yoo Jong-ha believes talks on that acute problem must be resumed
immediately, without waiting for the resumption of an official dialogue
between the authorities of two Koreas.
They must be held separately from political and intergovernmental
talks. The head of the South Korean Red Cross hopes these meetings will be
resumed before February 14, when Korea marks the Lunar New Year.
Last time the issue was discussed in October 2009, but representatives
of the Red Cross failed to come to a common terms. The only for the past
two years separated family reunion took place in September 2009.
Inter-Korean separated family reunions started after an historic
inter-Korean summit in 2000. Over 127,000 people applied for participation
in them in South Korea. However, North Korea tightly restricts the number
of participants for each of such meetings, that is why only one of 800
people wishing to embrace their relatives has such a chance.
About 16,000 people have been able to see their relatives over these
years. An estimated 600,000 people in South Korea have relatives in North
Korea.