South, N. Korea fail to reunion case

South, N. Korea fail to reunion case

SEOUL (AFP): South and North Korean negotiators holding talks in the North on reuniting families separated for more than half a century failed on Wednesday to settle a thorny issue of a rejected entry to a South Korean journalist, a South Korean pool report said.

Kim In-Koo from Seoul's conservative daily Chosun Ilbo, which is critical of the North's communist policies, was on his way home on Wednesday evening after the North's refusal to permit him entry, Chosun said.

The reporter had to stay on a South Korean cruise ship in waters off the North's scenic Mount Kumkang, the venue for the ongoing Red Cross talks.

Two rounds of "unofficial contacts" between South and North Korean Red Cross officials failed on Wednesday to persuade the North to allow him to join five other South Korean journalists covering the talks.

Red Cross officials from both sides of the divided peninsula began four days of talks on family reunions at Kumkang on Tuesday, were in recess Wednesday and will resume talks on Thursday, the pool report said.

The South delegation, led by Park Ki-Ryun, proposed Tuesday that a 161-member group -- 100 separated relatives, 30 support staff and 30 journalists -- visit the North, it said.

But the North delegation, led by Choe Sung-Chol, demanded the number be reduced to 151 by limiting the number of journalists to 20.

Although the North and South delegations were upbeat after the first day, vowing they would make progress, they faced another stumbling block over the repatriation of North Korean spies in the south.

Seoul has suggested that the former North Korean spies, mostly released from prison, be returned after the family reunions, but Pyongyang is insisting repatriation comes first.

Seoul officials have expressed hope that the family reunions will not be a one-time event but will continue on a regular basis. But the North's reaction was not immediately available up until Wednesday.

The South would propose setting up a "reunion house" for separated families at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom and regularizing reunions at the talks, Seoul's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said earlier.

South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il have agreed to arrange meetings for separated families around Aug. 15, the 55th anniversary of Korea being freed from Japanese colonial rule.

The agreement, reached during their historic summit in Pyongyang earlier this month, also called for a settlement of "the question of unswerving communists serving prison sentences" but without a specific date set for their repatriation.

According to the Seoul government, some 7.6 million South Koreans have relatives in the North. Most have had no news since the division of the Korean peninsula in 1945 and the ensuing 1950-53 Korean War.