“Our Red Cross Society is positively examining the issue in a humanitarian viewpoint despite the persisting hostile relations between the two nations,” an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman in Pyongyang was quoted as saying by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The spokesman said that American officials have recently proposed reunions to help the two sides build trust to resolve “more complicated issues.”
Asked about the North Korea report, Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, did not dismiss it outright. “I haven’t seen that report,” she told reporters in Washington. “But, you know, obviously this would be part of a larger conversation that we’re having with North Korea, which starts with their obligations on the nuclear side.”
Millions of Koreans were separated from their relatives when Korea was first divided into South and North Korea at the end of World War II.
The United States and North Korea technically remain in a state of war. During a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, thousands of Koreans were allowed to reunite with their families for a few days. During the last three years, the numbers have fallen due to tension between the two sides.
Yonhap, a national news agency in South Korea, predicted that North Korea would ask for humanitarian food aid from the United States in return for allowing some of those Korean-Americans to meet their North.
(아주경제 송지영 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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