North Korea yesterday rejected South Korea’s call for talks aimed at restarting reunions for families separated since the Korean War, saying Seoul should first respond to its conditions for dialogue.
South Korea’s Red Cross on Tuesday proposed the talks to discuss a resumption of the temporary reunions for family members separated since the 1950-1953 war.
Pyongyang’s Minju Joson newspaper accused Seoul of talking about reunions and other exchanges while secretly seeking sanctions.
Photo: AFP
If South Korea was genuinely interested in family reunions and other exchanges, the paper said, it should reply to a “questionnaire” addressed to Seoul’s leaders this month.
The questionnaire told the South’s leaders to “repent of their crimes” following the Dec. 17 death of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and to honor past summit agreements.
It accused them of showing disrespect during the mourning period for Kim and told them to halt major exercises with US troops and halt “vicious” smear campaigns.
South Korea has dismissed the demands as unreasonable.
Hundreds of thousands of family members were separated during the war, which sealed the division of the peninsula. There are no civilian mail or telephone connections across the border, and many do not even know whether their relatives are alive or dead.
The last temporary reunions, arranged by the two Koreas’ Red Cross authorities, but authorized by governments on both sides, -began in October 2010.
Plans for further events were scrapped after the North shelled a frontline island in South Korea in November that year, killing four people.
Since 2000, sporadic events have briefly reunited more than 17,000 people face-to-face and an estimated 3,700 — usually those too frail to travel — via video link.
However, 80,000 people in the South alone are on the waiting list for reunions and thousands die every year before getting their chance.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not