SKorean team leaves for NKorea talks

SKOREA: A South Korean delegation headed to North Korea Wednesday for talks on resuming reunions of separated families, amid signs of a thaw in cross-border ties.

A three-member Red Cross delegation will meet their North Korean counterparts for three days at the Mount Kumgang resort to arrange a new round of reunions after a two-year break.

Tens of thousands of families have been separated by barbed wire and minefields since the 1950-53 Korean War.

There are no civilian mail or phone services between the two countries, which remain technically at war in the absence of a peace treaty.

"Many people are looking forward to reunions with their families north of the border," delegation head Kim Young-Chol told journalists.

"We will try to have as many people as possible included in the reunions this time." The programme began in earnest after a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000.

Since then the two sides have held 16 rounds of face-to-face temporary reunions and seven rounds of video exchanges.

More than 16,000 Koreans were allowed face-to-face meetings while thousands of others communicated through video.

However, about 600,000 South Koreans alone are believed to have relatives in North Korea. Many are dying without ever meeting family members.

The last event was in October 2007. The programme was shelved as ties worsened between Pyongyang and a conservative government that took office in Seoul in February 2008.

The communist country has made a series of peacemaking gestures this month.

Leader Kim Jong-Il and a visiting Seoul business chief agreed reunions should resume around the Korean Thanksgiving holiday on October 3. They also agreed to restart tourism programmes to the North by South Koreans.

Last weekend Kim sent envoys to Seoul to mourn former president Kim Dae-Jung and hold talks with President Lee Myung-Bak.

SEOUL, Wednesday, AFP