Another setback for President Moon’s Sunshine 2.0:
This file photo, taken on Feb. 20, 2014, shows the reunions of family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War held at Mount Kumgang in North Korea. (Yonhap)
North Korea rejected South Korean lawmakers’ call to hold a reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, saying Wednesday there can “never be any kind of humanitarian cooperation” between the two countries unless 13 North Koreans “detained” in the South are returned.
They include a group of 12 workers from a restaurant in China run by the North Korean government, whom Seoul says defected voluntarily. Pyongyang claims they were kidnapped by South Korea’s spy agency.
The North also wants a 13th citizen, Kim Ryon-hui, a vocal Kim Jung-un endorser here who wishes to go back home. She left her home in Pyongyang to seek advanced medical treatment in China for a liver illness. She asserts to have been deceived by a Chinese broker in 2011, who told her she could make a fortune in the South and then return to China or North Korea. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Negotiate: send back Kim Ryon-hui, who seems to be a Kim cheerleader, and keep the rest. Everybody comes out happy.
You don’t get everything you want from a negotiation. But sometimes, you get what you need.