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Families of Three South Korean Abductees in North Korea Reunited

Posted on: Monday, 20 March 2006, 06:00 CST

Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap

Mount Kumgang, North Korea, 20 March: The families of three South Korean prisoners of war and abductees held in North Korea since during or after Korean War were reunited with their long-separated families in the communist state on Monday [20 March].

The reunions came as part of a Red Cross-sponsored programme to reunite North and South Korean families separated by the division of the Koreas.

The latest round of the Red Cross programme, the 13th of its kind, began Monday in this scenic resort on Mount Kumgang.

Each round usually involves 100 families and hundreds of their relatives from each side, but the South Korean group this time only consisted of 99 as one gave up his long-awaited trip to the North due to worsening health, South Korean Red Cross officials said.

The reunions are a highly emotional event, as most of the people waited at least 50 years since the end of 1950-53 Korean War to meet their loved ones.

About 13,000 families from the South have been reunited with their relatives in the North through 12 rounds of family reunions and four rounds of special reunions via video, but more than 90,000 in the South alone still remain separated from their relatives, while thousands of them have passed away over the last couple of years from old age.

The three South Koreans included a former soldier who is believed to have been taken back to the North at the end of the fratricidal Korean War.

The South Korean POW, Park In-hwan, has since died, but was survived by a 43-year-old son he had with his North Korean wife, both of whom came to see Park's younger brother Young-won from the South at the Red Cross reunions.

Thirteen South Korean POWs and another group of 13 South Korean civilians seized since the war's end have been allowed to be reunited with relatives from the South in the previous 12 rounds, but Pyongyang has never admitted that the people were held against their will.

The family reunions include private meetings between the families, but the South Korean POWs and civilian abductees are busy praising the communist state and its leader Kim Jong-il, according to their families in the South who met them.

The South Korean group at the reunions also included the 66-year- old wife of a former South Korean fisherman, Cheon Moon-seok, who was seized in June 1969 while aboard a fishing boat.

It was a bittersweet moment for the South Korean wife, however, as the meeting with Cheon also involved his two sons from a North Korean woman he married later.

The latest round of the separated family reunions is also the first since the Koreas agreed, albeit in vague terms, to resolve the issue of South Korean POWs and civilian abductees through the Red Cross-sponsored reunion programme.

"The sides agreed to negotiate and resolve the issue of separated families, including those whose fate remains unknown from during or after the (Korean) war," said a joint statement in the seventh round of inter-Korean Red Cross talks held late last month.

The Koreas remain divided since the end of Korean War, and are still in a state of war since the war ended only with a cease-fire and not a peace treaty.

The first group is to return to South Korea on Wednesday, while a second group consisting of 436 South Korean relatives of 100 people in the North will travel to the North Korean mountain resort on Thursday for a three-day meeting.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

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