The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

NKorea links renewed SKorea aid to family reunions

South Korean chief delegate Kim Eyi-do, center, leads other officials to leave for the North Korean border city of Kaesong at the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine office in Paju, near the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 16, 2009. Red Cross officials from North and South Korea met Friday to discuss staging more reunions families separated by the Korean War, amid Pyongyang's latest harsh rhetoric after recent conciliatory gestures.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

ENLARGE PHOTO

South Korean soldiers guard in front of the 2nd Underground Tunnel for security sightseeing against North Korea near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Cheorwon, northeast of Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 16, 2009. Red Cross officials from the two rival Koreas met Friday to discuss staging more reunions for families separated by war, amid mixed signals from the North that have included conciliatory gestures and harsh rhetoric in recent days. (AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man)

ENLARGE PHOTO

Judge cuts off embattled SCLC treasurer
Updated 24 min. ago
Crash holds up funeral procession
Updated 27 min. ago
Mother’s defense says boyfriend abused her daughter in secret
Updated 29 min. ago
SunCoke receives permit from Ohio EPA
5:32 p.m.
Dayton, Fairfield malls closing early
5:18 p.m.
> More headlines

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, The Associated Press Updated 9:21 PM Friday, October 16, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has asked South Korea to resume humanitarian aid in return for the North's cooperation in reuniting more families divided by their sealed border, officials said.

Red Cross officials of the two countries met Friday and discussed allowing more reunions of families separated for more than half a century by the Korean War. South Korea proposed holding two reunions in coming months, while the North demanded "unspecified" humanitarian aid, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said.

South Korean officials told their North Korean counterparts they would review the aid request, ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said. Friday's talks ended without agreement, he added.

Top South Korean negotiator Kim Eyi-do told reporters that North Korea agreed on the need to hold more family reunions but said the South should reciprocate with aid. He said the date for the next round of meetings would be determined later.

For a decade, South Korea was one of the biggest donors to the North, which has faced chronic food shortages since flooding and mismanagement destroyed its economy in the mid-1990s. But aid stopped when President Lee Myung-bak took office last year, saying any help must be conditioned to the North's denuclearization.

On Thursday, South Korea's top official for inter-Korean relations hinted that Seoul could offer North Korea humanitarian aid without conditions — an apparent softening of the government's stance.

"What the North Koreans want now is humanitarian aid. They are negotiating with the South to get it," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

The breakdown of the reunion talks at the North Korean border town of Kaesong came amid a string of contradictory moves by North Korea this week.

The North appeared to be reaching out to Seoul and Washington recently after more than a year of tensions. On Monday, however, the regime test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles.

Two days later, it gave a rare apology to South Korea for a dam release that killed six South Koreans in river flooding near the border last month. But on Thursday, its military accused South Korean warships of intruding on its waters off their west coast. Skirmishes in the area in 1999 and 2002 turned deadly.

Koh said North Korea's saber-rattling was aimed at bolstering its negotiating position and showing it could again raise tensions if it fails to get what it wants for recent conciliatory gestures.

North Korea continues to pursue direct talks with Washington. The U.S. has said it would consider talks if they're held under the framework of international nuclear disarmament talks that also involve South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. North Korea walked away from the talks earlier this year.

A senior North Korean nuclear negotiator plans to visit the United States this month. The State Department approved a rare visa for Ri Gun to attend a private security forum in California, Kim Myong Gil, a minister at North Korea's United Nations mission in New York, told The Associated Press on Friday.

A U.S. official said Ri, the director general of American affairs at North Korea's Foreign Ministry, would likely discuss nuclear matters with a senior U.S. diplomat while he was in the United States. The U.S. official spoke on condition ofanonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood confirmed that the department intends to authorize visas for Ri Gun and a North Korean delegation to attend conferences.

___

Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.

___

October 17, 2009 01:19 AM EDT

Share this article