N. Korea rejects reunion proposal

Pyongyang cites South’s ‘war’ exercises, criticism of Kim

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea on Thursday rejected South Korea’s proposal to hold reunions of elderly relatives separated by the Korean War six decades ago, but it kept the door open for a possible thaw in relations between the two Koreas.

On Monday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye had proposed resuming the reunions of separated families in time for the Lunar New Year’s Day on Jan. 31, a traditional time for family gatherings in Korea, saying it would be an important first step toward improving relations on the divided peninsula.

It was Park’s first concrete overture toward North Korea since assuming office last year. She spent her early months as president taking a tough stance against the North, which conducted its third nuclear test two weeks before her inauguration in February. Last spring, she warned of decisive retaliation when North Korea threatened nuclear and missile attacks against the South and its ally, the United States, and withheld any significant aid shipments until North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons.

In her proposal Monday,made at her first news conference as president, Park sweetened her overture with a promise to increase humanitarian aid for the impoverished North and to let South Korean civic groups help rebuild the North’s farm sector.

But on Thursday, North Korea sent the South a message saying that the mood was not right for holding family reunions. It blamed South Korean news reports and analyst commentaries that included a scathing criticism of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and quoted senior South Korean government officials who worried about possible political instability in the North after the purge of Kim’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek. Jang was executed Dec. 12 on charges of corruption and involvement in a plot to overthrow Kim’s government.

In rejecting the reunions, North Korea also bristled at the military exercises South Korea has conducted recently and plans to hold with the United States around early March.

The North calls these drills rehearsals for invasion.

“How can we hold family reunions in comfort while bullets and artillery shells are flying in exercises for war?” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted Pyongyang as saying.

According to the agency, North Korea said it also considered the “season and time” in rejecting Park’s proposal, indicating that it did not have enough time to prepare for family reunions in late January.

But, the agency reported, Pyongyang added that the two Koreas will be able to hold the reunions when “a good season comes,” suggesting that it would discuss them after South Korea and the United States have finished their scheduled joint military exercises in March and after reports critical of Kim have subsided in the South Korean media.

“It is a good thing if the South proposed family reunions with a desire to ease the pains of the division of the nation and improve North-South relations,” North Korea said, according to the agency.

It also said that future talks to arrange family reunions must discuss reopening an inter-Korean tourism program at the Diamond Mountain resort in North Korea, which had been highly lucrative for Pyongyang until it was shut down in 2008. South Korean officials said such demands could prove problematic.

“It’s regrettable that North Korea is linking a humanitarian project to our annual military exercises,” said Kim Eui-do, a spokesman of the Unification Ministry of South Korea. “We hope that North Korea will demonstrate its sincerity through action, rather than just talking about improving relations with the South.”

Park made her overture five days after Kim called for improved ties with South Korea during his New Year’s Day speech.

Millions of Koreans were separated from relatives when the Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and the pro-American South at the end of World War II. The subsequent Korean War, which began in 1950, ended in 1953 in a cease-fire, with the peninsula still divided.Since then, no exchanges of letters, telephone calls or emails have been allowed between North and South Koreans, and family reunions remain a highly emotional issue and an indicator of the tense state of relations on the peninsula.

About 22,000 people from both Koreas participated in 18 rounds of government-arranged reunions between 1985 and 2010, when the program was suspended as relations between the two countries soured.

About 73,000 South Koreans - half of whom are more than 80 years old - remain on a waiting list for a chance to meet with parents, siblings or children in the North for the first time in 60 years.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/10/2014

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