(LEAD) Seoul to propose inter-Korean Red Cross talks on family reunion

(ATTN: UPDATES with official press release)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Aug. 20 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will propose North Korea later Thursday
that the two sides meet to arrange reunions of separated families, following up
on Pyongyang's recent pledge to restart the suspended humanitarian contact,
officials said.

North Korea agreed earlier this week that it will reopen the border for a series
of conciliatory measures, including the resumption of reunions of families
separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, which were suspended by Pyongyang last year.
The accord suggested the Korean Thanksgiving holiday of Chuseok that falls on the
first week of October as the reunion date.
South Korea's Red Cross said in a statement it "will send a message this
afternoon" to North Korea's Red Cross to propose three-day talks starting Aug. 26
to arrange the reunions.
The proposed meeting venue is North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort, where the Seoul
government built a reunion house last year, it said.
The message will be sent through a military communications channel, Unification
Ministry officials said, as the inter-Korean Red Cross contact line at the truce
village of Panmunjom has been severed. Pyongyang cut off the dialogue channel in
November as one of its retaliatory measures against the conservative Lee
Myung-bak government.
The two Koreas set up family reunions through their Red Cross offices, an
arrangement that began after the first historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. Some
16,000 Koreans have been able to meet with relatives across the border, while
close to 3,750 others, mostly too old and weak to travel, have been reunited
through real-time video links under a program launched in 2005.
After 16 rounds of face-to-face reunions and seven rounds of video meetings, the
event was halted after President Lee Myung-bak took office in February last year.
In a rare conciliatory move on Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Hyun
Jeong-eun, chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group, agreed to a series of steps
to revive inter-Korean exchanges that also include resuscitating Hyundai's
tourism ventures in North Korea's Mount Kumgang and the historic town of Kaesong.

The Mount Kumgang resort was developed by Hyundai on North Korea's east coast.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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