[Editorial] A permanent meeting place for reunions

Participants in the fourth round of cabinet-level talks held in Pyongyang last week failed to make much headway in resolving fundamental and essential pending questions between South and North Korea. From what has been achieved during the meetings so far, we can gather that inter-Korean relations might not move ahead next year, at least as far as finding a fundamental solution to the problem of establishing of a peace system on the Korean peninsula, and setting up additional reunions of divided families, is concerned.

Negotiators from the two Koreas managed to produce an eight-point joint statement following torturous bargaining, but its contents were limited to economic cooperation issues and events such as family reunions.

North Korea went to great lengths to argue the question of "the chief adversary¡± concept in Seoul's defense framework, apparently seeking to disturb the cordial atmosphere of the talks.

Pyongyang adopted the tactic of linking the problem of separated families to economic aid from the South and, in particular, the supply of electric power. The North Koreans were wrong to use the plight of separated families as a bargaining chip, being that it is a humanitarian imperative that ought to be ironed out unconditionally.

The two sides failed to make any progress in efforts to set up a permanent meeting place for the reunions, streamline procedures for identifying and locating long-lost family members and initiate exchanges of letters between the two countries.

The negotiators barely managed to agree on exchanging the third group of 100 reunion participants in late February next year, and allowing some 300 people to begin correspondence with their relatives on the other side of the border in March. If North Korea sticks to these limited annual quotas of several hundred people who can meet or write to family members on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone, how much longer will the millions of other displaced Koreans have to wait?

The problem of providing electric power to North Korea also calls for careful consideration. The estimated 700 billion won that would be required to deliver 500,000 kw of electricity to the North would place a heavy burden on the South, especially in view of its present economic situation. Moreover, in light of the North¡¯s unwillingness to address other parts of the basic agenda, it is questionable whether the South should continue to defer to the North's demands for more economic assistance.

Pyongyang's attempts to exploit events like the family reunions to obtain increased economic aid is a serious departure from the spirit of the joint statement made at the historic June 15 summit.

The Seoul government must maintain an independent and unflinching posture while making clear to the North what constitutes proper conduct. The Southern delegation is known to have acted in a more dignified and firm manner during the latest round of talks. But it still failed to hand over to the National Assembly a resolution calling for the repatriation of Southern prisoners of war and civilian abductees still held in the North.

Just as it behooves the North to change its attitude, so it becomes the South to review and reform its posture toward North Korea so that the two sides can work together and buckle down to the business of attacking the fundamentals of improving inter-Korean relations.