Seoul to propose Pyongyang to expand, regularize separated family reunions

Seoul to propose Pyongyang to expand, regularize separated family reunions. September. 02, 2015 06:59. zeitung@donga.com.

The South Korean government plans to propose to North Korea at an upcoming inter-Korean Red Cross talks that the two Koreas expand the scale of the planned reunions of families separated by the Korean War and diversify the venues and methods of the events, source said Tuesday. Seoul aims to make it possible to hold reunions in Seoul and Pyongyang in addition to the current venue of Mt. Kumgang in the North, exchange visits by the families to their old hometowns, and video reunions. The South Korean government is scheduled to conclude its proposals to the North at the National Security Council`s standing committee meeting to be held at the presidential Cheong Wa Dae on Thursday.

The move comes as Seoul believes that it is necessary to speed up holding reunions more often in order to allow more elderly citizens to meet their family members left in North Korea. Nearly 82 percent of the separated families are over 70 years old, prompting President Park Geun-hye to call for the wide opening of channels through which separated families in the two Koreas will make exchanges.

Attention is drawn to whether Seoul will propose to increase the number of reunion participants to 200 from October events, up from the usual 100 at previous occasions. In 2006, the 14th round of reunions involved 200 people from the South and the same number from the North.

While the North is expected to insist on holding the upcoming event at the Mt. Kumgang resort, there is a possibility that Seoul will offer to hold it in Seoul and Pyongyang, as was the case with the first three reunions held between 2000 and 2001.

"We are considering all things about the venue and timing," an official at the South`s Unification Ministry told reporters on Tuesday.

Based on the judgment that it is possible to allow some 1,000 people a month to find out about the fates of their separated family members, Seoul plans to increase the number of families to be reunited as much as possible, if Pyongyang agrees on holding the events on a regular basis. If so, Seoul views that the families should be allowed to visit their hometowns and the graves of their beloved ones.

South Korea`s Red Cross organization set up a center in Seoul that would ask some 66,000 South Koreans with family members in the North if they consent the government`s exchange of separated families` names to check their fate. The organization expects the process to take about a month.

According to documents obtained by Kim Jae-won, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, from the Korean Red Cross, an annual average of 4,227 people with family members in the North passed away. The number translates to 12 a day on average. The private Hyundai Research Institute projected that most of the separated family members at ages 70 or older would pass away within 10 years and that most of the entire separated families will be deceased in 25 years. Therefore, the think tank said, at least 6,000 people a year should be given a chance to meet their separated families to allow them to reunite at least once before they leave this world.