*** INTER-KOREAN RELATIONS

U.N. Command-North Korea Talks End: Official

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Military officers from the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korea ended on Sept. 16 their fifth round of talks on the March sinking of a South Korean warship, a UNC spokesman said.

   UNC spokesman Kim Young-kyu said the talks among colonel-level officers from the two sides lasted about two hours at the border village of Panmunjom, without giving any immediate details. Kim said the UNC plans to release a statement later in the day.

   The colonel-level meeting was aimed mostly at setting the date and agenda for talks between generals of the two sides. The general-grade talks, which were first held in 1998, have been used as a means to ease tensions across the border.

   The two sides have held talks since July on the sinking of the Cheonan but have not made much progress, as North Korea has repeated its denial of responsibility for the sinking and renewed calls to send its own team of inspectors to the South to review the results of a multinational investigation that accused Pyongyang.

   The UNC proposed a task force to jointly assess whether the sinking violated the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

   The South's defense ministry released the full results of the multinational investigation earlier this week, reaffirming the conclusion announced in May that North Korea torpedoed the 1,200-ton Cheonan near the Yellow Sea border on March 26, killing 46 sailors.

   The Sept. 16 Panmunjom talks, however, came amid growing signs of a thaw in inter-Korean relations as North Korea has offered a series of conciliatory gestures, including a proposal to resume reunions of families separated by the Korean War.

   The North has also proposed holding working-level talks with the South's military to discuss issues surrounding the tense Yellow Sea border and anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets, Seoul's defense ministry said.

   However, defense ministry officials said their government is unlikely to accept the North's offer, given the complexity of the proposed agenda.

   The UNC, which monitors the Korean War armistice, is led by the top U.S. commander in the South. The U.S. has some 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea.

  
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Talks on Koreas' Family Reunion Event Collapse

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea held their second round of talks to arrange a proposed reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War but failed to agree over details amid Pyongyang pushing to revive a lucrative tourism program to the North.

   South and North Korea remain divided by their heavily armed border after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce. More than 80,000 South Koreans are waiting for a chance to be reunited, however briefly, with their loved ones who were left in the North after the war ended. An average of nearly 260 of those separated family members die each month, according to the Red Cross, South Korea's main channel for humanitarian cooperation with the North.

   Only 20,800 family members have enjoyed chances to be reunited since 2000, when the two Koreas held their first summit. About one-fifth of them have been reunited via video. Virtually no means of contact are available between the citizens of the countries, which remain technically in a state of conflict.

   Working-level Red Cross officials from South and North Korea held their second meeting in the North's border town of Kaesong on Sept. 24 to discuss arranging additional reunions of families separated by the Korean War.

   The first meeting over the reunions took place on Sept. 17 at the same place, during which the two sides agreed to hold the reunions from Oct. 21-27. The talks came amid the two Koreas being in heightened odds lately since the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, which Seoul holds the North responsible for.

   At the latest negotiation, South Korea demanded that the reunions, the first of their kind in a year if held, take place at a Seoul-owned building inside an inter-Korean resort on the socialist state's east coast.

   The North, however, did not see eye to eye and demanded the South first resume its cross-border tours that were halted when a South Korean tourist was fatally shot at the mountain resort in July 2008, according to the South's unification ministry.

   "Our side stressed the reunions must take place at the reunion center because the center is not directly related to the Mount Kumgang tours," the ministry said in a statement.

   South Korea refuses to consider resuming the lucrative tours until the North allows an on-site probe into the shooting and implements an array of measures to ensure tourist safety.

   Angry with the suspension, North Korea either froze or seized all South Korean facilities at the Mount Kumgang resort earlier this year, including the reunion center, hotels and shops.

   In an apparent response to Seoul's refusal to resume the tour program, once a significant income source for the cash-strapped North, Pyongyang denounced Seoul, alleging that it delayed the date and setting preconditions in holding the humanitarian event.

   "In the latest meeting, South Korea overturned and delayed the date for the upcoming family reunion and the exchange of lists containing family members' names, which had already been agreed on by both sides," the North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Sept. 25.

   Chun Hae-sung, a spokesman for the unification ministry, said during a press briefing on Sept. 27 that issues of family reunions and cross-border tourism programs are "completely separate."

   South Korea Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, also reacting to the North's unyielding stance, said during a parliamentary forum that Pyongyang "should not politicize the issue of family reunions."

   He further noted that "North Korea must cooperate in the fundamental resolving of the humanitarian issues between the South and the North, including the regularization of family reunions."

   Despite the deadlock over the venue, the two sides will meet again on Oct. 1 in Kaesong to continue talks on the location.

  
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Inter-Korean Trade Jumps in H1 Despite Soured Relations

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Trade between South and North Korea surged in the first half of the year despite high tensions over the communist nation's alleged sinking of a South Korean warship in March, a trade organization said on Sept. 29.

   South Korea's exports to the North soared 63 percent on-year to US$430 million in the January-June period with North Korea's exports to the South jumping 43 percent to $550 million, according to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).

   The unexpected surge came as the relations between the divided Koreas dipped to their lowest ebb in years after Pyongyang allegedly sank the South Korean warship Cheonan in March in what has been determined by an international investigation team as a torpedo attack. The sinking left 46 South Korean sailors dead.

   Seoul imposed a trade ban on the North in May though exchanges between the divided Koreas had already been waning.

   KITA attributed the increase of inter-Korean trade to the growth of a joint industrial complex between the two Koreas in the North's border town of Kaesong.

   "The increase is believed to have come from the amount of exchanges through the Kaesong complex, which increased 96 percent on-year, as the industrial complex is usually not affected by political relations between the South and North unlike general trading," KITA said in a press release.

   Still, trade between the two Koreas again fell short of North Korea's exchanges with its largest ally and benefactor, China.

   North Korea and China exchanged $1.28 billion worth of goods and services in the first six months of the year, while the amount between the two Koreas came to $980 million, or 69.8 percent of that between North Korea and China.

   Trade between the two Koreas peaked in 2007 when they exchanged nearly $1.8 billion worth of goods, or 91 percent of $1.97 billion between North Korea and China, KITA said.

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