South and North Korea Tuesday exchanged lists bearing the names of separated families who will take part in upcoming cross-border family reunions to be held for the first time in nearly two years.
The reunions, which were agreed to at inter-Korean Red Cross talks last month, will be held at the scenic Mt. Geumgang resort on the North's east coast from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1, shortly before Chuseok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving. The humanitarian project was suspended in late 2007 as Pyongyang boycotted inter-Korean dialogue.
"South and North Korea exchanged the results of their search to locate the relatives and find out whether they are alive," Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung was quoted as saying in a press briefing.
The Koreas exchanged the lists of 200 applicants on Sept. 1 and will narrow them down to 100 each based on the results of their search. The final lists will be exchanged on Thursday.
About 600,000 people in the South are believed to have relatives in the North from whom they have been separated since the 1950-53 Korean War. Applicants in South Korea are first selected through a computer lottery, with the final list determined according to those with surviving direct family members and age.
The upcoming reunions, as customary, are expected to include South Korean prisoners of war or fishermen who were allegedly forced to stay in the North after their boats strayed over the maritime border during the Cold War era.
Family reunions, arranged by Red Cross offices on both sides, were launched in 2000 as an outcome of the historic first inter-Korean summit that year. North Korea agreed to resume the event at Red Cross talks last month in one of the latest signs that it is shifting toward a reconciliatory stance with the South.