SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Red Cross societies from the divided Koreas on Tuesday began three days of talks expected to focus on hundreds of South Korean prisoners of war and abductees believed held in North Korea. Officials were meeting at a resort in North Korea for their first talks since November 2003, South Korea's Red Cross said.
| "Say Kim, you guys got any food?" |
The two sides each proposed an agenda focused on expanding reunions of separated families including video linkups, and on the sensitive issue of South Korean POWs and abductees, joint pool reports said. But both were careful to not to use the words POWs and abductees, instead referring to the issue as "determining the whereabouts of those missing during the war," the report said.
South Korea's Defense Ministry estimates that 538 South Korean prisoners from the 1950-53 Korean War were alive in North Korea as of December 2004. The Unification Ministry estimates that 486 South Korean abductees, such as fishermen whose boats were seized, are also being held in North Korea. Dozens of South Korean prisoners of war have escaped from the North since 1994, as the communist country relaxed controls over the movements of its hunger-stricken populace. However, efforts by South Korea to bring the remaining soldiers home have made little progress as Pyongyang denies holding any.
| Just a semantics problem, ya understand ... |
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