Heartfelt Korean reunions marred by missile worries http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-06-19T082041Z_01_SEO301876_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1-RelatedNews-1
Mon Jun 19, 2006
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea began on Monday their largest reunion of separated family members, while a possible North Korean missile test cast a cloud over the heart-wrenching meetings.
The reunions of Koreans whose families were separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War grew out of an unprecedented summit of the leaders of the two Koreas in 2000.
In principle, Seoul sees the reunions for the hundreds of thousands of Koreans whose families have been separated as humanitarian in nature and not tied to political developments.
The focus of attention for this round of reunions will be a meeting next week between a South Korean suspected of being kidnapped by the North in a high-profile abduction case and his mother.
The two Koreas will have a series of reunions that run through June 30 involving an estimated 1,760 North and South Koreans, a South Korean Unification Ministry official said.
While some 440 South Koreans arrived at a mountain resort in the North on Monday to start the series, U.S. officials raised concern of a possible imminent missile test by saying on Sunday Pyongyang is believed to have completed fuelling a missile that could be capable of reaching Alaska.
Washington, Tokyo and Seoul have warned a missile test would pose a grave danger to regional security.
These reunions have recently been touched by the troubled politics on the peninsula.
The most recent one in March was marred by North Korea temporarily refusing to allow the South Koreans -- mostly elderly -- to leave the mountain resort amid anger over media reports in the South that said Pyongyang had abducted South Koreans in the past.
The South Korean who will garner a great deal of attention during these reunions is Kim Young-nam. He is believed to have been abducted by North Korean agents when he was a teenager, Seoul has said.
He later is believed to have married Megumi Yokota, a Japanese abducted by North Korea whose case has become a focal point for Japan's anger at Pyongyang for kidnapping its citizens.
The reunions are mostly among elderly Koreans, many of whom have said it is their dying wish to see their mother, brother or some other family member they left behind on the other side of the peninsula a half century ago.
The North has recently allowed a few families of the hundreds of South Koreans it is suspected of kidnapping in the decades after the war to meet with their family members from the South.
Despite the criticism North Korea has faced in diplomatic circles over the expected missile test and for refusing to return to stalled six-country talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs, ties between the two Koreas have warmed in recent years.
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