Seoul proposes family reunion talks

By Kim Young-jin

South Korea on Tuesday proposed talks with North Korea over resuming a program to temporarily reunite family members separated by the Korean War, a move likely to raise hope among many here waiting to meet their loved ones in the North.

South Korea's Red Cross chief Yu Jung-keun made the proposal in a message to her North Korean counterpart, asking that they meet on Monday in Munsan in the South or Gaeseong in the North, both border cities. The respective Red Cross societies facilitate the events.

The North had yet to respond.

Hopes for a fresh round of reunions were dashed in recent months by lingering tensions between the sides. The death North Korean leader Kim Jong-il late last year cast further murkiness over prospects for the resumption of the program, seen as a bellwether of inter-Korean relations.

“The proposal was made to alleviate the pain of the separated families,” Yu said, adding she hoped the reunions would take place in the spring after about a month of preparations.

"I expect North Korea's Red Cross to respond positively," she said.

Tens of thousands separated by the Korean War have met temporarily through the reunions, but concern remains high as most of those some 80,000 waiting here to meet their family members are in their 80s and 90s. Some 4,000 of them die each year.

The last reunions were held amid a brief respite in tensions in October 2010. But plans for further events were stamped out after the North’s deadly shelling of Yeonpyeong Island the following month.

Cross border tensions have been high since President Lee Myung-bak took office in 2008 with a tough line on the North’s nuclear weapons program. They worsened with Pyongyang’s sinking of the warship Cheonan, which came eight months prior to the shelling.

Yu proposed in late November holding a round of reunions to a North Korean Red Cross official during an international Red Cross meeting in Geneva, but the event never materialized as the official reportedly replied it would take two months to prepare.

Since then, Pyongyang has redoubled its harsh rhetoric against the Lee administration following the death of the late leader, accusing it of not properly offering condolences for his death. Seoul offered sympathy for the North Korean people but did not send an official condolence delegation.

The new proposal came a day after the United States said it would send an envoy to China next week for talks with North Korea on its nuclear program. Washington sees the improvement of inter-Korean ties as a preliminary step to a better U.S.-North Korea relationship.

Yu said in a recent interview with The Korea Times that she planned to work to expand the number of participants at the reunions and establish “re-reunions” to allow past participants to meet their separated family members again and visit their childhood hometowns.

“I can’t think of any other domestic humanitarian issue more pressing than this, she said at the time.

As the two countries remain technically at war, people have no direct ways to contact those on the other side of the heavily-fortified border.