[USFK Forums] Separated Families Reunited Amid Chilly Relations [Korea Times]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Separted Families Reunited Amid Chilly Relations

The Korea Times, Monday, March 20, 2006Seo Dong-shin, Staff Reporter

[PHOTO: Unloadable] South Korea’s Roh Yon-bok, second from right, cries during a meeting with his children in North Korea at the 13th inter-Korean family reunion program, held at a hotel in Mt. Kumgang, North Korea, Monday. / Yonhap

Separated family members of the two Koreas were reunited at the scenic Mt. Kumgang in the North on Monday, despite recently chilled relations between South and North Korea over the planned military drills between South Korea and the United States.

The reunion sessions were the 13th of their kind since the first one in August 2000, which followed the inter-Korean summit in June the same year.

A total of 99 South Koreans and accompanying family members met with some 270 North Koreans on March 20-22. The second group of some 430 South Koreans will have the reunion session on March 23-25.

The reunion sessions have by now lost much of the public attention they used to draw in the South due to the fact that they are now being held on a rather regular basis, organized by Red Cross organizations of the two Koreas.

Nevertheless, it came at a sensitive moment just ahead of the annual joint military exercises between U.S. troops stationed in the South and the South Korean military, which start on March 25.

The week-long springtime exercises triggered angry responses from the North, which denounces them as a thinly veiled attempt to show off the military presence of the United States, or a hostile ``foreign power,'' in the South.

Last week, the North turned down the planned visits of South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok and Chung Dong-young, former unification minister and now chairman of the governing Uri Party, to Kaesong, where the inter-Korean industrial complex is located.

The rejection also came on the heels of the delay of the scheduled inter-Korean ministerial talks, which were to be held late this month.

North Korea cited the ROK-U.S. joint military exercises as the reason for postponing the cabinet talks. But it did not mention any particular reason for rejecting the visits by the former and incumbent unification ministers, requesting the visits be delayed to next month.

In addition, the North also turned down the South's offer to hold a working-level meeting on marine cooperation, according to Yang Chang-seok, spokesman of the Unification Ministry.

Last Wednesday, the South sent a telephone message to the North, suggesting the meeting be held, during which it hoped the two sides would discuss ways to set up joint fishing zone on the East Sea.

But the North replied in a message Friday that it is not fit to discuss the joint fishing area on the East Sea while the discussion on establishing a joint fishing area on the West Sea is still not seeing much progress, Yang said.


saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr

03-20-2006 17:43