[USFK Forums] No Further Hitches at Family Reunion in Mt. Kumgang [Korea Times]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Saturday, March 25, 2006

No Further Hitches at Family Reunion in Mt. Kumgang

The Korea Times, Friday, March 24, 2006 17:42
By Park Song-wu, Staff Reporter

No further troubles occurred during the second round of the 13th family reunion program that underwent at Mt. Kumgang in North Korea in absence of South Korean journalists, the Unification Ministry said Friday.

But the ramifications of 21 South Korean reporters' pullout from the scenic tourism area on Thursday was still discernable.

The North's Korean Central News Agency reported that Seoul is wholly responsible for the withdrawal of South Korean press, saying that the journalists should not think of entering North Korea in the future.

In a statement, the official mouthpiece of Pyongyang argued that North Korea was ``extremely'' bothered that terms like ``abductee'' and ``seizure'' were used by South Korean journalists to mislead the public.

Two South Korean broadcasters described a 76-year-old fisherman, who was meeting his South Korean wife at the family reunion venue, as one of 485 South Koreans detained in North Korea against their will.

North Korean officials barred the journalists from transmitting stories to Seoul and demanded one of the two leave North Korea, warning it would take punitive measures for his ``defamatory'' reporting.

Pyongyang has argued that all the South Koreans residing in the North, including fishermen and what Seoul calls ``prisoners of war,'' voluntarily defected to North Korea during and after the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North's statement said the South Korean reporters' attitude was a challenge to Pyongyang's ``generosity'' that was allegedly necessary in allowing the separated families to meet, despite the U.S.-South Korea military drill that is set to begin Saturday.

North Korea has repeatedly criticized the joint military drills, named the Reception, Staging and Onward movement and Integration (RSOI).

Pyongyang has already delayed inter-Korean ministerial talks, originally scheduled for March, to ``some time in April,'' on grounds that the South is ``wrongfully engaging itself in provocative war exercises with a foreign power.''

Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok expressed regret in Seoul on Thursday that the North limited the free coverage of the events by the South's journalists and delayed the departure of some 150 South Koreans who participated in the first round of the family reunion by one day.

The first group of South Koreans, who entered the North on Monday, was to return to the South on Wednesday, while the second group entered the North and began another three-day reunion round Thursday.

Since the two Koreas resumed contact in the 1970s, it was the first time for the South Korean journalists to pull out of the site of inter-Korean exchange programs.

im@koreatimes.co.kr

03-24-2006 17:42

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