Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=9/17/01

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=KOREAS TALKS - L ONLY

NUMBER=2-280615

BYLINE=JIM RANDLE

DATELINE=SEOUL

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Delegates from North and South Korea are continuing talks Monday on reviving stalled projects designed to promote peace and unity on their long-divided peninsula. These cabinet-level talks were broken off last March because of tensions between North Korea and South Korea's main ally, the United States. V-O-A's Jim Randle reports from Seoul, so far, there is little sign of progress on key issues.

TEXT: There were smiles and handshakes for the cameras at the beginning of Monday's talks.

But North Korean delegation leader Kim Ryong Song said South Korea still does not fully understand the North's "practical and realistic demands."

Those demands include the possible supply of Southern electricity to the impoverished North, as well as sending home a handful of former

pro-Communist prisoners currently prevented from leaving South Korea.

The issues are sensitive in South Korea, where the political opposition says President Kim Dae-jung has already made too many concessions to the North.

/// HONG ACT IN KOREAN, FADE ///

But here at the talks, the South Korean delegation put a more positive spin on the negotiations, with South Korean delegation leader Hong Soon-young describing the two sides as getting along well.

Mr. Hong has said inter-Korean Red Cross talks should be held as soon as possible to help reunite families separated ever since the Korean War five decades ago. Three reunions were staged in the past year, but tens of thousands more South Koreans, many of them elderly, have yet to see their family members in the North.

South Korea is also urging Pyongyang to honor earlier agreements to reconnect a railway between the two countries - one of several joint infrastructure projects. South Korea has nearly finished repairs on its side, but North Korea has

barely started.

Family reunions and re-establishing some direct links between North and South were the tangible results of the first-ever inter-Korean summit meeting last year. At that time, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il also promised to visit Seoul as the two countries worked toward eventual reunification.

But after two days of talks here in Seoul, there is no sign of progress on any of the issues.

There was no apparent progress either on a South Korean proposal to issue a joint statement condemning terrorism. (SIGNED)

NEB/HK/JR/JO