North and South Korea agree to hold family reunions

North and South Korea have agreed to hold family reunions this month in which hundreds of elderly relatives separated by the Korean War would meet for the first time in six decades.

Under the deal struck during Red Cross talks on their border yesterday, the two Koreas agreed to hold the reunions from February 20th to February 25th at the Diamond Mountain resort in southeast North Korea.

The two Koreas held their last family reunions in 2010, when the humanitarian programme was halted amid souring relations. The revival of the reunions suggested the governments were edging towards improving relations following military tensions incited by the North’s nuclear test last February and the more recent political uncertainty in Pyongyang in the wake of the purge and execution of Jang Song-thaek, the North’s second-highest official.

Mr Jang, the uncle and longtime mentor of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was executed in December for what Pyongyang said was a plot to overthrow his nephew’s government. Despite the internal political upheaval, Mr Kim called for improved relations on the Korean Peninsula in his New Year’s Day speech.

In her response, South Korean president Park Geun-hye urged Pyongyang to prove its sincerity through “action”, suggesting that if North Korea agreed to reunions, her government would increase humanitarian aid for the North.

“We hope that today’s agreement will be implemented without a hitch and help ease the pain and anguish of separated families,” said the South’s unification ministry.

South Korea planned to send an advance team to the Diamond Mountain resort this week to check on facilities where elderly Koreans will be staying during their reunions.

Family reunions remain a highly emotional issue for Koreans and have been an important barometer for relations on the divided peninsula.

The two Koreas remain technically at war after the three-year Korean conflict ended in a truce, leaving millions separated from relatives across the most heavily armed border in the world. No phone, letter and email exchanges are allowed between the citizens of the two countries. For the so-called “separated families”, the occasional government-arranged reunions are virtually their only chance to meet their long-lost relatives.

The two governments arranged 18 rounds of such reunions between 1985 and 2010, allowing 22,000 Koreans to meet their parents, siblings or other relatives for the first time since the war. About 73,000 South Koreans, half of them older than 80, remain on the waiting list of the Red Cross, which uses a lottery to pick participants.

In the reunions planned for this month, 100 people from each Korea will be allowed to meet relatives.
– (New York Times service)