Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=11/10/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-269074

TITLE= KOREAS / FAMILY REUNIONS (L-ONLY)

BYLINE=HYUN SUNG KHANG

DATELINE=SEOUL

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Red Cross officials from the two Koreas are due to exchange (have exchanged) lists of candidates for a second set of family reunions due to take place later this month. Seoul officials say the exchange of lists is helping to ease concerns that the meetings might be cancelled because of a dispute over comments made by the head of the South Korean Red Cross. Hyun-Sung Khang reports from the capital, Seoul.

TEXT: The lists contain the names and whereabouts of 200 separated family members. Half will be selected to travel across the border at the end of November to meet relatives they have not seen in half a century.

South Korean officials say the exchange of lists dispels fears that North Korea might put off the reunions. Those concerns were heightened recently when Pyongyang accused the head of the South Korean Red Cross of slandering the North.

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Red Cross head Chang Choon Shik had been quoted in a South Korean magazine interview as saying facilities in the North Korean capital were decrepit and that the family reunions would allow Koreans to compare their political systems. Pyongyang described his comments as an intolerable challenge and mockery of the North and said it would be hard to go ahead with the reunions while Mr. Chang remained in office.

But a week later, North Korean Red Cross officials sent a letter to their counterparts in the South proposing new regulations for the amount of cash gifts to be exchanged between reunited family members. The Northern officials made no mention of Mr. Chang's controversial comments. Pyongyang has proposed a five-hundred-dollar ceiling on cash gifts and also that presents be limited to clothes and souvenirs. South Koreans who traveled North for earlier reunions in August have been quoted as saying they were heart-broken after witnessing the living conditions in the North.

If the family meetings go ahead later this month, they will be the second group reunions to take place this year. The agreement on reuniting separated family members was one of the main accomplishments of the inter-Korea summit last June between the leaders of the two Koreas. Since then relations between the North and South Korea have been improving rapidly.

There are an estimated seven million Koreans separated from other family members by the Korean War and the division of the peninsula. (signed)

NEB/HK/HSK/GC/PFH