Assembly to seek inter-Korea family reunions

By Choi Ha-young

The National Assembly will try to hold a reunion of families separated following the Korean War (1950-53) on Liberation Day, Aug. 15, officials from a majority of parties said Monday.

If held, the reunion will be the first since October 2015 when the event was stopped following continuous North Korean provocations.

Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun and party floor leaders said after their weekly meeting they would push to resume the meetings.

“We’ve agreed to issue a resolution to push for a family reunion on Aug. 15,” Kang Hoon-sik, spokesman of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), told reporters. The day is an important anniversary in both Koreas to mark liberation from the 1910-45 Japanese occupation.

However, the three parties ― the DPK, the People’s Party and the Bareun Party ― need to persuade the largest opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), as its floor leader Chung Woo-taik refused to attend the meeting in protest of the DPK’s “unilateral” endorsement of Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon last week.

“We have to talk with Chung,” Kang added.

There have been 20 family reunions since the first one in 2000 under the Kim Dae-jung administration. But what was supposed to be a regular event became irregular, depending on inter-Korean relations under the conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye. Since October 2015, the two Koreas have failed to reach a consensus.

As a presidential candidate, President Moon Jae-in, whose parents’ hometown is in the North, pledged to continue reunions for all surviving family members. Moon and his mother attended a reunion together in 2004 where he met a long-lost aunt.

Human rights groups have urged the government to see the reunions from a humanitarian point of view, as the people who still have family in the North are getting older, while many of them have passed away. Among 60,995 people registered as having family members in the North, 19.2 percent are in their 90s, while 43 percent of them are in their 80s. In April alone, 327 passed away.

Separate from the family reunions, the government has endorsed four more requests from South Korean civic groups for contact with their North Korean counterparts, Monday.

The groups are the NGO Green One Korea, to discuss joint moves to conserve forests; the Council of South and North Korean Historians, to take care of cultural assets; the World Taekwondo Federation, to hold a conference with the North; and the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation also to hold a conference.

However, the future of the initiatives is not so rosy as Pyongyang refused to allow one group into the country to protest the United Nations’ sanctions against its missile and nuclear tests.

So far, 15 civic and religious organizations have gained approval, according to the unification ministry. The ministry said it would approve nongovernmental exchanges while also keeping international sanctions against Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear threats. Moon’s Foreign Minister nominee Kang Kyung-wha said humanitarian aid to the North should come with no strings attached.