Red Cross to head talks on reuniting separated Korean families

World Today

A delegation from South Korea is en route to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for more talks. This time discussions will be led by the South Korean Red Cross.

And they’ll focus on reuniting the tens of thousands of families separated by the Korean War. CGTN’s Shane Hahm has details.

The ROK and DPRK are holding more talks at the border this week. This time, talks are spearheaded by the Red Cross from both sides.

On the agenda will be mainly humanitarian issues, such as resuming family reunions for families that were separated by the Korean War.

There’s also word they may discuss making these events more normalized so that they can occur more regularly.

There might be a project for families trying to locate and determine if loved ones are still alive across the DMZ.

This came about after President Moon and Chairman Kim agreed to hold reunions sometime in mid-August.

“We will discuss various humanitarian issues with the DPRK.,” said South Korean Red Cross President Park Kyung-seo. “In particular, we will do our best to discuss how much and in what way we can ease the sorrows of 57,000 divided family members.”

Family reunions were last held in 2015.

But this year relations have improved, most notably with the Winter Olympics, the inter-Korean summit, and the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore.

In the meantime, inter-Korean ties are getting back on track. Agreements in sports, military talks, also rail, road, infrastructure, forestry are all areas that both sides seem keen on improving.

There’s also an agreement that a liaison office will open sometime in August.

But the most urgent of all is likely family reunions, many are of old age. It’s been nearly 6.5 decades since the end of the Korean War.