By Here comes North Korea again with the usual play at the South Korean heartstrings by offering to hold family reunions:
North Korea has proposed holding Red Cross talks with the South on reunions of families split by the Korean War in what would be a rare contact between the rivals locked in a row over the sinking of a South Korean naval ship.
North Korea’s Red Cross chief made the proposal to his counterpart in the South to arrange the meetings at the Mount Kumgang resort just north of the Korean armed border, the North’s KCNA news agency said Saturday.
The proposal was issued in the “hope that humanitarian cooperation between the North and the South would (accelerate) with the reunion of separated families and their relatives,” it said.
South Korea’s state-sponsored Red Cross said it would consider the proposal in a positive manner and discuss it with the government.
The two Koreas have been in a standoff since Seoul accused Pyongyang of attacking one of its ships in March, killing 46 sailors. Pyongyang has denied the charge and said it would retaliate by force if the South imposed sanctions.
South Korea has offered a one-off aid to the North in recent weeks as relief for the flood damage that ravaged large stretches of farmland and homes. [Associated Press]
Before anyone starts claiming this is some kind of breakthrough, keep in mind this is not being done out of the warmness of Kim Jong-il’s heart. This is a cold political calculation which gives him another bargaining chip to deal with because he can threaten to stop the reunions if South Korea doesn’t offer the amount of aid the Kim regime wants. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak recently offered the North Koreans a small one-time flood relief aid. These family reunions are just another way for the North Koreans to get more aid out of the South. There is nothing humanitarian about this offer, it is just one of the usual cards the North Koreans play from time to time to get what they want.
7:26 pm on September 10th, 2010 1
It's just a bargaining chip for North Korea. They need money and get it by using these families.
7:56 pm on September 10th, 2010 2
Yes – money is the key, since the Norks charge a ridiculous amount of money for people from the South to participate, plus they 'took over' all of the Kumgangsan resort, didn't they? So they would collect all of the money spent there as well. Ridiculous…
7:58 pm on September 10th, 2010 3
Koreans ALWAYS want to know: How much?
Yet they don't ask their kind norK brothers.
9:49 am on September 11th, 2010 4
"This is a cold political calculation which gives him another bargaining chip to deal with because he can threaten to stop the reunions if South Korea doesn’t offer the amount of aid the Kim regime wants. "
Exactly. It's also a cash-making endeavor for North Korea.
I just hope President Lee doesn't take the bait.
"South Korean President Lee Myung-bak recently offered the North Koreans a small one-time flood relief aid."
8.5 million dollars is not a small amount considering how little of it will be used to deal with the flooding.
11:46 am on September 11th, 2010 5
They are apparently want the reunions to take place at the Mount Kumkang resort. I'm curious to see how President Lee will respond.
2:09 pm on September 11th, 2010 6
The NK authorities always tell their people "Juche" which means self-reliance but the government can not survive without foreign ail primarily from Red China & their enemies in SK. If & when the NK regime collapses I think there is going to be an enormous problem in deprogramming the NK populace. If this happens and the NK populace finally learns the truth about what has gone on in their country & the world (for example the NK people have never been told about the moon landing in July 1969) the people running NK had better get the foxtrot out of Dodge.
10:47 pm on September 11th, 2010 7
#6,
Just imagine…The whole nation's been living under a rock for 60 years. On top of that, the Kim regime's use of starvation as a means of population control must have had an incredible physical and psychological toll on the average North Korean.
2:01 am on September 12th, 2010 8
The debt ridden bankrupt American economy will collapse first before North Korea ever does.
3:39 am on September 12th, 2010 9
Leon LaPorte wrote:
Yet they don’t ask their kind norK brothers.
And you read the Korean-language news to know this?
The number-one Korean-language daily is a conservative newspaper that frequently asked "how much?"
As much as I value ROK Drop, The Marmot's Hole, Korea Beat, etc., these cover only a fraction of Korean news that the Korean-language sources cover.
9:03 am on September 12th, 2010 10
How come none of these reunions ever take place on THIS side of the DMZ?
2:48 pm on September 12th, 2010 11
#10,
At least one that I know of took place in Seoul. North Korea would much prefer being the host. They make more money out of it that way.
PS. Offering to hold it at the Mt. Kumkang resort, the same resort North Korea illegally ceased earlier this year from its South Korean partner? If that ever happens, I wouldn't be surprised if a backroom deal was struck between the North Korean government and a certain South Korean corporation.
2:50 am on September 13th, 2010 12
When the family reunions started happening one did take place in Seoul. I'm sure the NK people who crossed the DMZ into SK were all sent off the concentration camps afterwards by NK govt to keep their mouth shut about how SK is a much more desirable place to live than NK.
You can tell easily who knows what's going on in the SK/NK affair by looking at their reaction to stories like these. Ones that claim that this is a breakthrough of some kind are the ones you don't want to waste time listening too…