North Korea has proposed resuming a program of reunions for families separated by the division of the Korean Peninsula despite icy relations between Pyongyang and Seoul, state media said yesterday.
The North’s Red Cross Society suggested a working contact with the South at the earliest possible date to arrange the reunion of separated families at the North’s Mount Kumgang resort on Sept. 22.
The South Korean Ministry of Unification said Seoul was considering the proposal “positively.”
The proposal was made in a notice sent on Friday by Jang Jae-on, chairman of the Central Committee of North Korea’s Red Cross Society, to his South Korean counterpart Ryu Jong-ha, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
It comes despite strained inter-Korean ties in the aftermath of the North’s alleged torpedoing of a South Korean warship.
Jang said there was a precedent for reunions to mark the traditional folk day of the harvest moon, which falls on Sept. 22 this year, adding that reunions alleviated the pain of separated families.
In an apparent easing of tensions after months of hostility, the North on Tuesday returned a South Korean fishing boat and its seven-man crew seized a month ago and requested flood aid from its neighbor.
Professor Yang Moo-jin, of the University of North Korean Studies, said that the North’s proposal was apparently aimed at sweetening the atmosphere in order to obtain as much aid as possible from the South.
In September last year, hundreds of Koreans had tearful reunions with relatives they had not seen for almost 60 years, when the humanitarian program was resumed after a two-year hiatus.
However, reunions petered out after Seoul ignored Pyongyang’s request for massive food and fertilizer aid.
A conservative government which took office in Seoul in February 2008 took a tougher stance toward the nuclear-armed North Korea, suspending annual shipments of food and fertilizer.
Inter-Korean ties hit a new low after South Korea and its allies punished the North with fresh sanctions, accusing it of torpedoing one of its warships near their disputed sea border in March, killing 46 sailors.
Professor Yoo Ho-yeol, of Korea University in Seoul, said the new proposal was also designed to pave the way for dialogue with Washington.
Kurt Campbell, the US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said on Thursday that Washington wanted North and South Korea to ease rising tensions before negotiations resume on ending Pyongyang’s nuclear disarmament drive.
Campbell said the US was in “deep consultations” on the next step forward. Stephen Bosworth, the US pointman on North Korea, is due in Asia next week for talks.
US-allied South Korea has expressed unease about Chinese-backed calls to resume six-nation talks on North Korea’s nuclear drive, saying that its communist neighbor first needs to demonstrate its seriousness.
South Korea and the US have called on the North to admit responsibility and apologize over the sinking, although it has been unclear whether they consider it an non-negotiable condition for talks.
The US diplomatic push comes as North Korea’s ruling party holds a rare meeting, which many analysts believe will anoint ailing leader Kim Jong-il’s youngest son Kim Jong-un as the 68-year-old’s successor.
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