| |
SEOUL: South Korea Thursday pressed North Korea to hold regular reunions of families separated for half a century, after the two sides agreed in rare talks to host the next event this autumn.
The agreement is the latest peace overture by the communist North after more than a year of cross-border hostility.
A pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan, which often reflects official thinking, said leader Kim Jong-Il is determined to break the impasse in relations.
Kim envisions the reunions as a "watershed" in improving ties, Choson Sinbo said.
When three-day talks started Wednesday at the North's Mount Kumgang resort, Red Cross officials from the two countries reached tentative agreement to hold the next round of reunions around the Korean Thanksgiving holiday on October 3.
They also agreed to select 100 people on each side and locate their relatives across the border.
Tens of thousands of families have been separated by barbed wire and minefields since the 1950-53 war. There are no civilian mail or telephone services between the two countries.
The reunions, which normally last for two or three days, were last held in October 2007.
The North suspended the programme as its ties worsened with South Korea's conservative government which took office in February 2008.
Thursday's talks focused on details such as dates, said Chun Hae-Sung, spokesman for the South's unification ministry.
"Our position is that family reunions should not stop as a one-time event but continue on a regular basis," he said.
The ministry said the North has refused to discuss the sensitive issue of Korean War prisoners and of South Koreans believed captured by the North during the Cold War era.
South Korea has pushed to include its missing citizens - estimated at around 1,000 - in the family reunions.
But North Korea, which says it is holding no one against their will, insists the agenda should be limited to regular family reunions.
Kim Jong-Il and a visiting Seoul business chief agreed this month that reunions should resume around Thanksgiving. They also agreed to restart tourist trips to the North by South Koreans.
Last weekend Kim sent a team to Seoul to mourn ex-president Kim Dae-Jung and hold talks with current leader Lee Myung-Bak.
The overtures follow months of sabre-rattling, including missile launches and a nuclear test which brought tougher United Nations sanctions.
The North this month freed two US reporters after ex-president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang. It has expressed willingness for talks with Washington to end the nuclear standoff.
The reunion programme began in earnest after a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. Since then more than 16,000 Koreans have held face-to-face meetings while thousands of others communicated by video.
However, about 600,000 South Koreans are believed to have relatives in North Korea and many are dying without ever meeting loved ones.
- AFP/yb
|
