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(2nd LD) Two Koreas to hold family reunion talks for first time in 2 years
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Aug. 25 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea will hold talks this week to set up a new round of reunions for separated families, Seoul officials said Tuesday, the first such dialogue in nearly two years.
In another sign of thawing relations, North Korea normalized a direct inter-Korean communications link that it suspended for months to protest Seoul's hardline stance. | | Data picture |
"We will discuss procedures with the North so that the talks can start tomorrow as planned," Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said in a press briefing.
In a last minute response, North Korea accepted South Korea's proposal for three-day Red Cross talks starting Wednesday. Through the Red Cross hotline at the truce village of Panmunjom, the North said it will send a three-member delegation to the talks to be held at the North's Mount Kumgang resort on the east coast. The talks are expected to set the number of participating families and determine procedures for locating relatives on the other side of the border.
Seoul made the proposal last week, following up on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's agreement to resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and hold the first new round on the traditional Korean holiday of Chuseok that falls on Oct. 3.
Arranged by the Red Cross, the reunions started at the end of 2000 as an outcome of the historic first inter-Korean summit between late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and the North Korean leader earlier that year.
The reunions were last held in October 2007 and did not continue after political relations chilled with the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak, who linked inter-Korean relations to progress in Pyongyang's denuclearization.
The Koreas have so far held 16 rounds of face-to-face reunions and seven rounds of video reunions, temporarily reuniting about 23,600 South Koreans and 12,500 North Koreans.
About 600,000 South Koreans are believed to have relatives north of the border.
In another positive sign, North Korea appears to have permanently normalized the Red Cross hotline, ministry officials said. Pyongyang said last it was restoring the hotline to communicate with a North Korean delegation that visited Seoul to pay condolences to the late Kim, but Seoul had not been sure if the connection was permanent. North Korea did not respond to calls from Seoul on Monday after the delegation returned home.
"The North's side told us it has begun normal operations. We view this as the normalization of communications between the Red Cross offices,"
The Red Cross channel, a key hotline between the two governments, was shut down in November as Pyongyang protested Seoul's participation in a U.N. resolution criticizing its human rights conditions.
The Koreas are technically at war as the Korean War ended in a cease-fire, without a formal peace treaty.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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