*** INTER-KOREAN RELATIONS

Koreas Take Measures to Help Preserve Ancient Palace Site in N. Korea

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- A group of eight South Korean experts and workers crossed the border into North Korea on Nov. 24 to work on a monthlong project to help preserve and restore an ancient royal palace site in North Korea, Soul's officials said.

   The trip follows up on a recent inter-Korean joint safety survey of the ruins of Manwoldae, a palace in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.

   Kaesong served as the capital for most of the Goryeo Dynasty that ruled the Korean Peninsula from 918 to 1392. Now it is home to an industrial complex run by both Koreas.

   The South Koreans plan to collaborate with their North Korean counterparts to restore ruins that were damaged by floods earlier this year, officials said.

   The joint project is expected to pave the way for the resumption of the excavation of palace ruins as early as next spring, according to historians involved in the issue.

   The two Koreas launched the excavation project in 2007, but South Korea halted it last year as part of its sanctions against Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North.

  
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S. Korea Says Food Aid Reached Intended Beneficiaries in N. Korea

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- South Korea's recent private food aid has reached North Korean children, officials said on Nov. 30, a sign that aid is going to its intended beneficiaries in the socialist country.

   There have been widespread allegations that the North diverts outside food aid to its elite and military, a key backbone of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's rule.

   The assessment came a day after a South Korean official and four civilians returned from a rare trip to the North to monitor how 300 tons of flour were distributed to children.

   The monitors visited two kindergartens and a nursery in the northwestern city of Jongju on Nov. 25 and saw first hand the distribution of the flour and how it is stored and prepared, said Unification Ministry spokeswoman Park Soo-jin.

   The distribution of flour was going well and "the government plans to make efforts to ensure it can consistently monitor" aid to the North, Park told reporters.

   It was the first time that North Korea has allowed a South Korean official to travel to the isolated country to monitor aid since a conservative government took power in Seoul in 2008.

   Cho Joong-hoon, the South Korean official who traveled to the North's city for a rare monitoring of aid, said North Korean children appeared to be poorly nourished.

   He also said the child care facilities were not heated even in cold weather.

   The average North Korean child is much shorter than its South Korean neighbors of the same age, due to poor diet amid chronic food shortages, according to aid officials.

   The World Food Program (WFP) has said that a third of all North Korean children under five are chronically malnourished and that many more children are at risk of slipping into acute stages of malnutrition unless targeted assistance is sustained.

   The trip came amid renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula over South Korea's massive military drills near the tense sea border -- the scene of the North's two deadly attacks on the South last year.

   North Korea recently threatened to turn Seoul's presidential office into "a sea of fire" in its latest harsh rhetoric against South Korea.

   Ambassadors for the Peace Association, a civic group that is partly funded by the Unification Group, donated the flour to Jongju, the birthplace of Unification Church founder Moon Sun-myung.

   The civic group is also scheduled to deliver another 300 tons of flour aid to the North Korean city on Thursday.

   The North has relied on foreign handouts since the late 1990s when it suffered a massive famine that was estimated to have killed 2 million people.

  
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S. Korea Proposes Year-end Family Reunion Talks with N. Korea

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- South Korea has proposed holding discussions with North Korea on year-end reunions of family members separated by the Korean War six decades ago, a Red Cross official said on Nov. 30.

   South Korea's Red Cross chief Yu Jung-keun made the offer to a senior North Korean Red Cross official on the sidelines of an international Red Cross meeting in Geneva last week, the official said.

   The North Korean official suggested that year-end reunions will be difficult as it takes up to two months to prepare for such reunions, though he did not issue a definite response, the official in Seoul said on condition of anonymity, citing office policy.

   South Korea has repeatedly called for frequent family reunions with North Korea.

   The two sides have usually staged the reunions around Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday that is celebrated in both countries, and other important national holidays.

   The offer came amid renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula over South Korea's massive military drills near the tense sea border. North Korea recently threatened to turn Seoul's presidential office into "a sea of fire" in its latest harsh rhetoric against South Korea.

   Millions of Koreans have been separated from their family members since the 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, leaving the two sides in a technical state of war.

   The divided Koreas have held more than a dozen rounds of reunions since a landmark summit in 2000, bringing together more than 21,000 family members who had not seen each other since the war.

   There are no direct means of contact between ordinary civilians of the two countries that remain divided by a heavily fortified border.

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