Koreas exchange lists of surviving relatives for family reunions

(ATTN: UPDATES 4th para with Red Cross press release on N.K. search results,
adjusted number of relatives)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea exchanged results of their
search for families separated by the border on Tuesday ahead of their upcoming
reunions, the first to be held in nearly two years.
A new round of family reunions, agreed on at inter-Korean talks last month, will
be held at the scenic Mount Kumgang resort on the North's east coast from Sept.
26 to Oct. 1, shortly before the traditional Korean holiday of Chuseok. The
humanitarian project was suspended in late 2007 as Pyongyang boycotted
inter-Korean dialogue.
"South and North Korea exchanged the results of their search to locate the
relatives and find out whether they are alive," Unification Ministry spokesman
Chun Hae-sung said in a press briefing.
In the lists of 200 applicants exchanged on Sept. 1, the South located surviving
relatives for 159 North Koreans, and the relatives totaled 1,388, said the Red
Cross office in Seoul, which arranges the reunions with its North Korean
counterpart. The North located 709 relatives for 143 South Korean applicants, it
said. The final lists of 100 people will be exchanged on Thursday.
About 600,000 people in the South are believed to have relatives in the North
from whom they have been separated since the 1950-53 Korean War. Applicants here
are first selected through a computer lottery, and the final list is determined
according to those with surviving direct family members and age.
The upcoming reunions, as customary, are expected to include South Korean
prisoners of war or fishermen who were allegedly forced to stay in the North
after their boats strayed over the maritime border during the Cold War era. The
number of such applicants for this round was not yet known.
Pyongyang officially denies holding any South Koreans against their will, but has
usually included several of them in previous reunions.
Family reunions, arranged by Red Cross offices on both sides, were launched in
2000 as an outcome of the historic first inter-Korean summit that year. North
Korea agreed to resume the event at Red Cross talks last month in one of the
latest signs that it is shifting towards a reconciliatory stance with the South.
South Korea, meanwhile, was demanding an apology over a deadly flood unleashed by
the North on Sept. 6. North Korea has said that rising water levels at a dam
caused an "emergency" that forced it to discharge the water. The floodwaters
killed six people who were camping along riverbanks in the South.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)