Korean war threat overshadows family ties

By Bill Tarrant

SEOUL (Reuters): The Korean peninsula remains one of the world's last remaining Cold War flashpoints despite steps toward reconciliation such as last week's reunions of families separated since the Korean War a half-century ago.

Two days after the two countries staged emotional, and at times, irritable family reunions among elderly relatives in Seoul and Pyongyang, South Korea's defense ministry issued a "white paper" naming North Korea the country's greatest military threat.

The white paper said North Korea has deployed more than 55 percent of its key forces in forward bases near the border which could launch a blitzkrieg attack before the arrival of U.S. forces on the peninsula.

That's what happened 50 years ago, when troops from North Korea poured across the border and overran much of the peninsula before U.S.-led United Nations forces battled Chinese-backed North Korea to a stalemate at the 38th parallel.

The armed truce ending the conflict remains in effect, leaving the two Koreas in a state of war.

"Despite the rapid thaw in inter-Korean relations since the historic June summit, we decided to maintain the concept of a primary enemy, as we saw no fundamental changes in the North's key policy of communizing the South," Army Maj. Gen. Cha Young- koo, director-general of the ministry's policy planning bureau, told reporters on Monday.

The white paper also said the United States would deploy up to 690,000 troops, 160 vessels and 1,600 warplanes in South Korea as reinforcements in the event of a North Korean attack.

The United States currently has 37,000 troops in more than 90 military installations in South Korea.

Since 1994 South Korea and the United States have conducted an annual military exercise, involving a combined command post and augmented U.S. forces, that routinely provokes howls of protest from Pyongyang.

Against this backdrop, the sniping that occurred during last week's reunions was like the squabbling of sibling rivalries at a family holiday dinner.

And military officials from the Koreas held another round of talks on Tuesday in the UN truce village of Panmunjom about cooperating in rebuilding road and rail links across the world's most fortified border.

The second round of reunions in Pyongyang and Seoul got off to a rocky start when North Korea reacted in outrage to remarks by the South Korean Red Cross chief to a local magazine.

North Korea threatened to call off the three-day reunions, which began on Thursday, after South Korea's National Red Cross President Chang Choong-sik said Northerners were "poor and lacking freedom".

North Korea is one of the world's poorest countries, with a per capita income of US$1.50 per day, and its military-backed dictatorship severely curtails individual freedoms. But Seoul is treading lightly on these issues as it tries to bring Pyongyang out of its Cold War isolation.

Chang, who was to lead the delegation of 100 elderly South Koreans, officials and journalists to the reunion events in Pyongyang, flew to Tokyo last week instead.

That didn't stop Chang's North Korean Red Cross counterpart, Jang Jae-on, from excoriating him at the reunions in Seoul.

Jang, who led 100 elderly North Koreans and their minders to the Seoul event, described Chang "as a poor soul who must pay for his sin with death or rebirth as a right person".

In Pyongyang, the Saturday departure flight of the South Koreans was held up for several hours after authorities detained a photographer from South Korea's leading newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, confiscating his film and searching his notebook.

North Korea was upset because the Chosun had reported the South Koreans in Seoul were getting fed up with listening to their Northern kin lavish praise on "Great Leader" Kim Jong-il and his father, "eternal president" Kim Il-sung.

The Chosun demanded in an editorial this week that the government do something about North Korea's "discourteous behavior".

"If the administration continues to show a willingness to tolerate Pyongyang's hypersensitive reactions and inclinations, it will hardly win a national consensus for its North Korean policies," the conservative newspaper's editorial said.

President Kim has made his "sunshine policy" of engagement with North Korea a hallmark of his nearly three-year-old administration. He will receive the Nobel peace prize in Oslo next week in large part for those efforts, which led to the June summit with King Jong-il in Pyongyang.

Political analysts say these spats are to be expected and are perhaps a useful outlet for countries who have had a deep-seated animosity for a half-century.

Both sides have said a third round of reunions is planned for early next year.

"We have to anticipate those kinds of reactions from North Korea and it should be within the limits of our tolerance and expectations," said Lee Dong-hwi, dean of research at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.

With a new Republican administration likely in Washington, North Korea has no choice but to talk to the South, he said.

"North Korea might want more dialog and cooperation with South Korea as a kind of insurance against a possibly stronger position against North Korea by the Bush administration."