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.