Separated family reunions to focus on participants图片展示
发布时间：2024-09-21 观看次数：60491
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Separated family reunions to focus on participants详情
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| The photo shows recreational facilities at Mount Geumgang in the North. Separated family members of the South and North will meet at Mount Geumgang for reunions next week. Korea Times file |
By Kim Bo-eun
Separated family reunions that will take place in North Korea next week will focus on providing participants personal time with family members and eliminating physical inconveniences, considering they are elderly, according to the unification ministry, Friday.
This will be done through enabling them to have lunch separately instead of dining in a group and simplifying security checks when South Korean participants head to the North.
From August 20 through August 22, selected South Koreans will meet with long-sought relatives in the North at Mount Geumgang. From August 24 through August 26, North Koreans will meet long-sought relatives in the South at the same venue.
The considerations were made to have the reunion focus on participants' needs.
On the second day of each session, participants will be able to separately have lunch with long-lost relatives.
"The program will increase the time the participants can spend with long-lost relatives," a ministry official told reporters.
"The program was also created in a way that minimizes walking for participants, as this is difficult for many of them and some are in wheelchairs," the official said.
According to data from the ministry, 85 percent of surviving separated family members are in their 70s or older.
Medical and emergency response staff will accompany the participants.
The ministry will also seek to enable more participants to meet each time a reunion event is held, as they are elderly.
This is based on the fact that the number of participants fell short of the quota _ this time 89 South Koreans will take part in the first session of reunions and 83 North Koreans will take part in the second session. These figures fall short of the 100-person quota each for the South and North for the reunions this time. This is due to people who give up participation at the last minute.
"It is difficult to fill the quota with little time remaining as verification procedures take time. But it is important that we allow more people to meet their families even it if is just one person," a ministry official said.
Next week's reunions will be the first to be held under the Moon Jae-in administration, and the first to be held since inter-Korean relations started making progress this year.
Holding reunions in August marking Liberation Day that celebrates Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule was one of the agreements in the Panmunjeom Declaration reached at the summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in April.
The most recent reunion was held in October 2015. Resuming separated family reunions had been a pressing humanitarian issue because the surviving people are now aged. A total of 132,603 people have registered as separated family members in the South and 56,862 are alive.
The first reunion was held in 2000 after leaders President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il met for the first time the same year after the Koreas became divided. Nineteen more events were held since. A total of 4,677 families and 23,519 people reunited through the events.
People separated from their families during the 1950-53 Korean War are the main constituents but also included are people who were separated before the war, abductees and North Korean defectors.
Facilities at Mount Geumgang such as hotels, event and dining halls and power generators have been repaired in time for the reunions. The expenses incurred from the reunion events are covered by a South Korean fund for inter-Korean affairs. The fund will cover 3.2 billion won ($284 million) in expenses.
Meanwhile the unification ministry said the dialogue process is going on to fix details over an upcoming summit between leaders of the South and North in Pyongyang, next month.
Preparations are also underway to open an inter-Korean contact office in the North's city of Gaeseong within this month. This is another of the agreements in the Panmunjeom Declaration. It will be the first inter-Korean organization where officials of the South and North will work together in the same building.