Koreas - family reunions

South and North Korea discuss family reunions

Article published on the 2009-08-26 Latest update 2009-08-26 13:12 TU

Anti-North Korea protesters hold a defaced North Korean flag during a protest in Seoul on 26 August, 2009. Despite the protest, relations between the two countries have improved in recent weeks
(Photo: Reuters)

Red Cross officials from South Korea and North Korea began talks Wednesday to try to facilitate the meeting of families who were divided after the 1950s Korean War.

The three-day meeting began at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry. If the talks are successful, family reunions could resume in October, after being suspended for two years.

Thousands of families have been separated since the 1950-53 Korean War, and there is still no phone or post service between the two countries.

"We will try to have as many people as possible included in the reunions this time," said the head of the South Korean delegation, Kim Young-Chol. About 600,000 South Koreans are believed to have relatives in North Korea.

This meeting is further evidence of a recent improvement in cross-border ties, though Korea specialist Aiden Foster Carter of Leeds University says the two countries are so distant, than anything would improve the relations.

“You couldn’t be further away than they had been,” he told RFI, pointing to North Korea’s regular insults to South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, and the lack of contact between the two countries. “The very fact that anyone is meeting in any context, family reunion or whatever, is a hopeful sign.”

The actual meetings will be very limited, involving only a fraction of the number of people who have applied, and not allowing anyone to visit ancestral villages.

“About a hundred, now very elderly people… from each side will meet in a very stylized format in a resort,” said Carter. “They’ll have about two or three days, some of it—to my mind—rather like a rather ghastly TV show in front of TV cameras… Then they will all go home and that will be that.”

“Whether there is any long-term effect is not clear,” he added. “It’s a good thing they’re starting again. But they are very limited.”

The family unification programme, which started after the Inter-Korean summit in 2000, was suspended in February 2008 when Lee came to power.

Before it was suspended, more than 16,000 Koreans took part in 16 rounds of face-to-face, temporary reunions, and thousands have communicated in seven rounds of video exchanges.

Relations between the two countries seem to be improving. Last weekend North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il sent envoys to the South Korean capital Seoul to mourn former president Kim Dae-Jung and hold talks with Lee.

North Korea also eased border restrictions last month in order to restart a tourism programme for South Koreans.