North Korea yesterday demanded massive food aid from South Korea in return for concessions over a reunion program for separated families, a Seoul official said.
The demand for 500,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of fertilizer was made when the two sides met in the North’s city of Kaesong to discuss reunions, media pool reports from Kaesong quoted the official as saying.
A one-off meeting program for families separated by war 60 years ago will start on Saturday at the jointly run Mount Kumgang resort on the North’s east coast and will last six days.
It will link 100 people from each side with long-lost family members.
However, Seoul wants to hold the emotional events nine times a year because many elderly people die before realizing their dream of such a meeting.
“North Korean delegates linked the issue of separated families and the aid, indicating that they could make concessions if rice and fertilizer aid are given,” the unidentified official was quoted as saying.
The South Koreans replied that this request should be discussed between government authorities rather than Red Cross officials, who are in charge of the reunion program.
The South Koreans suggested they meet again on Nov. 25 in the South’s town of Munsan near the border.
“At the next round of talks, we will be able to discuss both issues at one sitting — the reunions and humanitarian projects, including rice and fertilizer aid to the North,” the official said.
The South annually supplied its hungry neighbor with some 400,000 tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of fertilizer until a conservative government came to power in Seoul in 2008, linking major aid to nuclear disarmament.
In Seoul, the minister in charge of cross-border relations lashed out at the North for what he termed its intransigence.
“North Korea refuses to come forward, even a single step, as seven months have passed since the sinking [of the South Korean warship Cheonan],” South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said in a speech at a forum.
The South accuses the North of torpedoing the Cheonan in March, with the loss of 46 lives. The incident, for which the North denies responsibility, plunged relations to their lowest point in years.
“North Korea still denies responsibility for the Cheonan incident and it continues to drag its feet on humanitarian issues,” Hyun said. “Even as the North says it will return to the six-party talks, there is no sign of it taking any concrete steps toward denuclearization.”
The North has said it is willing in principle to return to the long-stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks, but the South and the US say it must first improve cross-border ties and show commitment to nuclear disarmament.
About 20,800 Koreans have been brought together briefly since the reunion program began in earnest in 2000, but more than 80,000 people in the South alone are still waiting for their turn.
The North has suggested three to four reunions a year, but in addition to the aid request, it links the issue to a resumption of commercial cross-border tours to Kumgang.
The tours once earned the impoverished North millions of dollars a year. South Korea suspended them in July 2008 after a North Korean soldier shot dead a Seoul housewife who had strayed into a military off-limits zone.
It says it will not resume them until the North allows an on-site investigation into the shooting and gives firm safety guarantees.
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