North Aborts Next Family Reunions

North Korea abruptly called off on Friday the reunion of separated families that was to begin Tuesday, citing security concerns.

"An unpredictable and tense atmosphere is being created in the South," said the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland in a statement broadcast by Radio Pyongyang.

"The South, overreacting to what is happening in the outside, put its armed forces and police on highest alert," the statement continued. "It would be extremely risky for scores of civilians to fly into a place where a top security alert is in full force and anti-air missiles could be launched at the slightest touch." Also canceled was a joint taekwondo demonstration that was to have been held in Seoul next weekend.

North Korea thus aborted the only concrete agreements ?other than plans for more talks ?produced during the Sept. 16-18 inter-Korean dialogue, which had been hailed as a new start for relations on the peninsula after a six-month hiatus since March.

But Pyongyang said that the planned Oct. 28 joint ministerial talks, the Oct. 23 conference on economic cooperation and the Oct. 19 working-level dialogue on overland travel to Mount Kumgang will go ahead as scheduled

The meetings are all planned to take place in Mount Kumgang, North Korea, except for the ministerial dialogue. But North Korea wants that meeting, too, to be held in the mountain resort area, instead of in Pyongyang, as agreed.

The South Korean government questioned the need for this series of talks in the wake of Friday's postponement.

South Korean Unification Minister Hong Soon-young, said, "We strongly protest and express deep regret that the North has unilaterally put off the pending event. We can not but worry whether the inter-Korean ministerial and economic cooperation talks can be fruitful should they be held, when the reunion is put back."

Mr. Hong's protest was delivered to the man who had been his North Korean counterpart during the Sept. 16-18 dialogue, Kim Ryong-song.

Other government officials, too, expressed dismay and said that policies toward the North would proceed with caution and be based on public opinion.

The officials strongly objected to Pyongyang's treatment of the reunion as a political, not humanitarian event.

In its radio statement, the North Korean committee said, "Especially, [the South's] armed forces pledged to strengthen its defense posture and preparedness for mobilization, discussing countermeasures against military movements in the North."

"Our security measures are not aimed at the North, and so such a matter can not impact implementation of the inter-Korean agreements," Mr. Hong, the unification minister, said.

The deputy unification minister, Kim Hyung-ki, warned that "the North's action will have a bad effect on the South's plans to send some 300,000 tons of rice to the North."

Families were gripped by disappointment beyond words. Tears streamed from the glazed eyes of Oh Jung-dong, 77, a South Korean father living in Bucheon, Kyonggi province.

"I dreamed last night that my daughter was being swept away by a river. I did not think it was a omen," he said. He was to travel to Pyongyang to meet his daughter, Oh Pil-sun, 56, on Tuesday.

Kang Il-chang, 75, of Seoul, said, "How can this happen? It is now more unbearable than before, when I thought I would never see them again." He was to meet his younger sister, Kang Kkot-bun, 72, and five other siblings in Pyongyang.

The family of Kim Min-ha, vice chairman of the South's Presidential Advisory Council on Democratic and Peaceful Reunion, was to meet with his brother, Kim Sung-ha, 74, a former professor at Kim Il Sung University. "We did not know it was this hard to reunite with your lost kin," a family member said.

The reunion events have taken a psychological toll on South Koreans, many of whom left their families in the North during the 1950-1953 Korean War or whose families were captured or taken to the North. Two elderly South Koreans have committed suicide in the past two weeks, after failing to make the list of 100 selected to reunite with their lost kin.

The government had pinned its hopes for furthering inter-Korean reconciliation on a flurry of exchanges scheduled for October, despite continued criticism from the South Korean public.

"The North is sticking to the wrong strategy in attempting to gain only economic benefits while ignoring humanitarian issues," Professor Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University said. "It should realize that the Seoul government now has to pay more attention to domestic politics."

Political parties blasted the North.

"Putting back or canceling the reunion defies the spirit of the June 15 Joint Declaration between the two Koreas," said Chairman Han Kwang-ok of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party.

"It is a thoughtless act that erodes the trust between the two Koreas," said Kwon Hyun-chul, spokesman of the opposition Grand National Party.

by Lee Young-jong