N. Korea talks could also address humanitarian issues
SEOUL: Beyond the future of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, a number of other issues could be raised during upcoming talks between Pyongyang, South Korea and even the United States.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un plans to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April and, according to South officials, wants to meet US President Donald Trump.
South Korea’s long, complex relationship with its northern neighbour leaves the two sides with a wide range of issues to potentially address.
The Korean War of the 1950s ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war and families torn apart on both sides of the military demarcation line that divides the peninsula.
South Korean officials have called for the resumption of visits between separated Korean families in the North and South, as a “humanitarian and human rights issue”, especially as many family members are now in their 80s.
“Over 75,000 individuals residing in South Korea are aging and dying without meeting their families residing in North Korea,” said the Korean Red Cross.
The South has also sought the resumption of video conferences and the delivery of letters from separated family members.
North Korea also has a number of foreigners imprisoned, including at least six South Korean citizens, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.
Among them are Christian missionaries Kim Jung-wook, who was
arrested in October 2013, and Kim Kook-kie and Choi Chun-kil, who have been held since 2014, the ministry said.
The other three are North Korean defectors who South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said last year were “captured” by the North without specifying where and why.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday he wanted to see a resolution to the issue of past abductions of 13 Japanese citizens Pyongyang admits were kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies.
North Korea also holds three American men.
Kim Dong-chul, a KoreanAmerican missionary formerly of Fairfax, Virginia and thought to be 62, was sentenced in March 2016 to 10 years of hard labour for subversion.
Kim Sang-duk, 59, also known as Tony Kim, spent a month teaching accounting at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) before he was detained at Pyongyang International Airport in April 2017 while trying to leave the country.
Kim Hak-song, thought to be 55, also taught at PUST, which was founded by evangelical Christians and opened in 2010.
He was detained in May while travelling by train from Pyongyang to the Chinese border town of Dandong.
Pyongyang has previously demanded Seoul return 12 North Korean women who worked at a North Korea-run restaurant in China and defected to South Korea as a group in 2016.