Rival Koreas resume Beijing talks on family reunions

Rival Koreas resume Beijing talks on family reunions

BEIJING (AP): Four days after faltering over a naval skirmish
in the Yellow Sea, North Korea and South Korea briefly resumed
talks Saturday, trading views on the clash, the detention of a
tourist, and reuniting families separated in their bitter 54-year
rivalry.

Negotiators met for nearly two hours in the basement of a
swanky China World Hotel in Beijing before agreeing to meet again
Thursday.

Although it was unclear if any progress was made, prospects
for the talks -- the highest level contacts between the
governments in 14 months -- improved with North Korea's release
Friday of a South Korean tourist detained for six days.

"It was regrettable about the arrest of the tourist. I welcome
her safe return to South Korea," Vice Unification Minister Yang
Young-shik told the North Korean negotiators at the start of
Saturday's session. "I hope that such incidents will not be
repeated."

The release was North Korea's first goodwill gesture to South
Korea since their navies exchanged fire in disputed waters June
15 and one North Korean gunboat was sunk. North Korea left the
opening session of the Beijing talks Tuesday demanding an apology
for the sinking but later agreed to return without preconditions.

"I hope these talks will bear fruit and produce good results,"
North Korean chief negotiator Pak Yong-su told Yang before the
meeting. "We should repay our peoples' anticipation and hope."

During the session, South Korea presented a plan for family
reunions and North Korea pledged to consider it, Yang told
reporters afterwards. He said he and Pak agreed not to release
details of their talks.

North Korea and South Korea have strong reasons to overcome
their antagonism and reach an accommodation in Beijing.

Communist Pyongyang desperately needs the money the capitalist
South can provide to rebuild an economy ruined by four years of
famine. South Korea's democratic President Kim Dae-jung needs a
breakthrough to parry domestic critics of his more open policy
toward the North, especially after the naval clash and the
tourist's arrest.

South Korea coaxed North Korea to the negotiating table
earlier this month by promising to deliver 200,000 tons of
fertilizer by the end of July in return for discussing family
reunions.

An estimated 10 million Koreans were separated from their
families from the partition of the peninsula in 1945 and then
Korean War fought to a stalemate from 1950-1953.

North Korean negotiators scuttled the last high-level talks,
in April 1998 also in Beijing, by refusing to discuss reunions.
South Korea's Yang, at Tuesday's session, described reunions as
an urgent matter, as many of those separated are elderly and
ailing.

In a display of prickliness, Pyongyang demanded Saturday's
talks be moved to a new hotel after the one originally selected
as the venue displayed a South Korean flag, South Korea's Yonhap
News Agency reported.