The two Koreas should make cooperative efforts on holding another round of reunions of families separated by the Korean War ahead of next month’s Chuseok holiday, chairman of Seoul’s right wing ruling party said Wednesday.
Considering the old age of most of these family members, there is a need for the divided Koreas to make more effort in resuming the long-stalled reunions at an early date, Hong Joon-pyo of the ruing Grand National Party said in a radio address.
“I believe it is time for us to untangle complicated issues between the two sides,” he said. “We should also consider diversifying the reunion channels so that more of these old-aged people can at least hold video meetings with their loved ones.”
Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday, falls on Sept. 11-13 this year.
Some 20,000 families have been briefly reunited via face-to-face or video meetings following the program which began after the landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000. Millions of families remain separated since the Korean War, which ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty, with unauthorized contact between ordinary citizens in the two divided Koreas forbidden by law.
Of some 120,000 people who have applied to meet their families through the program, 40,000 have died and up to 66,000 are aged 70 or older. It would take at least six decades for all of the remaining applicants to even briefly reunite with their families through the program, according to Seoul government data, unless the quota is expanded.
The last round of family reunions was held in late October last year, days after which Pyongyang conducted a deadly attack against a Seoul border island, killing four people.
The move further chilled relations between the Koreas who are technically still at war with one another. No discussions have been held over another round of reunions since then.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which specializes in affairs with the North, said it had “no plans” to first suggest holding such reunions.
“We do recognize this as a humanitarian issue with top priority. But we have no plans to proceed on the issue for this coming Chuseok,” Chun Hae-sung, the ministry’s spokesman, told a regular press briefing Wednesday.
Another ministry official said while Seoul has no plans to make the first move, it is “unlikely to decline” if Pyongyang first suggests holding the reunion. The official asked not to be named.
The two Koreas have been making slow but clear efforts to thaw the ice since their chief nuclear envoys met on the sidelines of a regional security forum last month.
An issue with relatively lighter political weight, a new round of reunions may help the two sides further mend ties.
The family reunion program often laid the groundwork for talks on more politically-sensitive issues in the past and is viewed as a barometer of inter-Korean ties.
