Koreas exchange lists of separated family members
Officials of the South Korean Red Cross depart for the truce village of Panmunjeom to deliver the list of 250 South Korean candidates for the separated family reunion, and details of their family members in the North, at their office in Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap
By Kim Bo-eun
The Red Cross of the South and North Tuesday exchanged documents requesting a search for surviving separated family members on each side, at the truce village of Panmunjeom.
The requests for the searches come ahead of the scheduled reunions set to take place in August.
In the South's request were a list of 250 South Korean candidates and the personal details of their family members in the North.
The 250 candidates were selected based on their willingness to take part in reunions, and the conditions of their health, from the initial 500 individuals randomly selected by computer.
The South Korean Red Cross received a list of 200 North Koreans from the North.
The South and North will exchange documents with the results of the family member search by July 25.
Based on the results, 100 people will be selected each from the South and North and the final list of participants will be exchanged on Aug. 4.
South Korean participants will be informed about their trip to the North on Aug. 19 and depart the next day.
The Koreas agreed at a Red Cross meeting last month to hold a reunion from Aug. 20 to 26 at Mount Geumgang.
South Korean government and corporate officials visited Mount Geumgang last week to inspect facilities there, and work is being done to get them ready for the event next month.
Holding a reunion around Aug. 15, marking the day Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule, is among the agreements in the Panmunjeom Declaration reached at the inter-Korean summit in April.
The last reunion took place in October 2015.
Resuming the reunions had been an urgent humanitarian issue as most of the surviving separated family members are now in their 70s or older.
According to government data, among 131,531 that have registered as separated family members, 57,920 are still alive.
A total of 20 reunions have taken place since the first in 2000 that was held after the first inter-Korean summit the same year. The events have enabled around 20,000 people to meet with long-lost relatives but this is only 15 percent of the total number of those registered.