Korean Red Cross talks to focus on POWs, abductees

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean Red Cross and government
officials traveled to North Korea on Tuesday for talks on the
fate of South Korean prisoners of war and civilian abductees
believed to be alive and held in the North.

Separately, generals from the South and North will meet on
March 2 and 3 in the border truce village of Panmunjom to
resume talks on preventing armed clashes and easing tension,
the government said. Those talks had been suspended since June
2004.

While Seoul considers the two sets of talks positive signs
in ties with Pyongyang, they deal with matters the North has
reacted sensitively to and where tangible progress remained
elusive.

North Korea said last year 10 South Korean prisoners of war
and 11 civilian abductees were still alive in the North. Many
in the South, including the Red Cross, believe more than 1,000
POWs and civilians taken after the 1950-53 Korean War are held
there.

“These are not easy subject matters,” a senior Red Cross
official heading the South Korean delegation was quoted as
saying by Yonhap news agency as he departed Seoul, referring to
the prisoners of war and abductees.

But the missing people will be at the top of the agenda for
the first round of Red Cross talks in six months, another Red
Cross official said by telephone.

The delegates are expected to sit down for talks late on
Tuesday in North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort, he said.

The last round ended with no progress on the South’s hope
of confirming the survival and whereabouts of the missing
persons.

The South Korean Defense Ministry has said more than 19,000
of its soldiers were missing at the end of the Korean War. More
than 540 of them are probably still alive, it has said.

There are also some 480 civilians, many of them fishermen
abducted at sea, believed to have be taken after the war and to
still be alive in the North, the ministry has said.

The two Koreas remain technically at war under a truce that
ended the war.

The generals’ meeting in March will discuss measures to
prevent naval clashes in the Yellow Sea, including setting up
joint fishing grounds, and other confidence-building measures,
the defense and unification ministries said.

Sporadic clashes off the Korean peninsula’s west coast have
killed scores of sailors on both sides.