South and North Korea failed to reach agreement yesterday on holding more family reunions after Pyongyang sought humanitarian aid from Seoul, officials said.
The two sides “failed to bridge differences on their stances on further reunions” but agreed to arrange more talks, an official with Seoul’s Unification Ministry told Yonhap news agency.
“The North asked for humanitarian aid from the South. We told them that we will review it after returning [to the South],” the official said.
Earlier reports said the North was seeking “reciprocity” in return for holding more reunions of families separated since the Korean War. The talks at the North’s town of Kaesong were the second to be held this week after months of hostility.
During a meeting Wednesday on another issue, the North made a rare apology to the South for causing a cross-border flood that killed six people.
But Pyongyang also test-fired five missiles on Monday.
Then on Thursday, the North accused South Korean warships of broaching its territory in waters off their west coast, warning of a naval clash along their disputed sea border — the scene of deadly naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.
The North has offered to resume key joint projects with the South and has proposed direct talks with the US, but neither initiative has yet been accepted.
As part of a series of conciliatory gestures that began in August, Pyongyang restarted a reunion program it suspended for almost two years to protest against a hardline policy toward the North by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. He has linked aid to the North to its nuclear disarmament
Hundreds of family members held brief emotional reunions in the North at the end of last month.
Millions of families remain separated following the Korean Peninsula’s division in 1945 and the ensuing Korean War.
The South proposed holding more reunions next month and next February. It wants to put the program on a regular basis since many elderly people are dying before they have the chance to meet loved ones.
Seoul officials had predicted that the North would raise the issue of rice aid.
South Korea used to send around 440,000 tonnes of rice and 272,000 tonnes of fertilizer a year to its neighbor, which suffers persistent severe food shortages.
Relations worsened when a conservative administration took office in Seoul in February 2008 and there have been no government shipments since then.
The South says cross-border relations cannot fundamentally improve till the North agrees to scrap its nuclear program.
But Unification Minister Hyun In-taek indicated on Thursday that Seoul was prepared to offer the North humanitarian aid without conditions, an apparent softening of the government’s stance.
“We will provide limited humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable groups in North Korea regardless of political and security circumstances,” he said in a speech to the EU Chamber of Commerce in Korea.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS