hankyoreh

a staff member looks at a work document on the reception desk where members of divided families seeking reunions with their relatives in North Korea register for possible reunions at the Korean Red Cross offices in central Seoul

By Choi Hyun-june, staff reporter

North Korea officially rejected the proposal made by President Park Geun-hye during her New Year’s press conference to hold reunions for divided families around the Lunar New Year. At the same time, the North did not completely rule out the possibility of holding reunions later, saying that it is willing to sit down with the South at an appropriate time if the South is willing to also talk about North Korea’s proposal of resuming tourism at Mt. Keumgang.

In a telephone message that the secretariat of North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF) sent to the South Korean Unification Ministry on the afternoon of Jan. 9, the CPRF said that it is pleased to see that the South is making another proposal for the reunions now. Nevertheless, it rejected the idea of holding the reunions around the Lunar New Year, suggesting that divided families and relatives would not be able to meet in peace as long as South Korea continues its military exercises. At the same time, the CPRF said that the North “could sit down with the South at an appropriate time if nothing else is taking place in the South and if the South is willing to discuss our proposals as well.”

The Unification Ministry sent a telephone message to North Korea proposing that they hold divided family reunions around the Lunar New Year on Jan. 6, immediately after President Park made the same proposal in her New Year press conference.

In explaining its rejection of the proposal to hold reunions for divided families, the CPRF said that, “In contrast with our sincere efforts, the South began the year with its media, experts, and officials engaging in discourteous behavior while it showers bullets and bombs as it trains for war.” It appears that “discourteous behavior” was aimed at comments made by President Park Geun-hye during her New Year press conference on Jan. 6. At the conference, Park brought up North Korea‘s nuclear weapons and its purge of Jang Song-thaek, former head of the Korean Workers Party’ Administrative Division. The remark about training for war is believed to as reference to the “New Year Total Annihilation of the Enemy” exercises, which took place in Yeoncheon County in Gyeonggi Province on Jan. 2.

“We express regret that North Korea linked our annual military exercises with humanitarian affairs,” a spokesperson for the Unification Ministry said. “We urge the North to respond with sincerity to our proposal for resuming reunions for divided families.”

“North Korea’s telephone message was so oblique that we had to read it several times before we could figure out what it was trying to say,” said one government official on condition of anonymity. “We are seeing this as less of a rejection of the proposal for divided family reunions and more of a postponement because of the weather.”

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