Analysis: S.Korea seeks deal for POWs
By JONG-HEON LEE, UPI Correspondent
SEOUL, April 10 (UPI) -- South Korea is considering providing North Korea with massive economic aid if Pyongyang hands over some 1,000 prisoners of war and other South Koreans kidnapped by the communist country, officials here said on Monday.
South Korean officials are expected to propose the idea of an aid-for-release deal when they meet their North Korean counterparts later this month for high-level reconciliation talks.
According to Seoul's Defense Ministry, some 19,000 South Korean soldiers were listed as missing in action during the 1950-53 Korean War, and more than 540 of them are still stranded in the North.
The South's Red Cross also says some 480 South Korean civilians abducted by the North, mostly fishermen, since the end of the war are still being detained in the North.
North Korea has recently confirmed only 21 South Korean POWs and kidnapped citizens are alive in the country, but denied holding them against their will. It claims the South Koreans defected voluntarily.
How to deal with the fate of the POWs and other South Koreans held in the North has long been a dilemma for the South Korean government which has sought reconciliation and cooperation with the communist neighbor, setting aside their decades-long Cold War hostilities.
The Seoul government has maintained a low-key stance toward POWs and the kidnapping issue for fear of creating friction with the Pyongyang regime, which may damage the hard-won momentum for cross-border rapprochement.
In September 2000, South Korea sent home 63 North Korean spies and guerrillas who had been in prison for decades with the hope Pyongyang would reciprocate. But the gesture was not matched, which triggered skepticism about Seoul's reconciliatory policy.
Recent North Korean defectors have testified on the humanitarian plight facing South Korean POWs detained in the concentration camps. U.S. efforts to highlight human rights abuse in the North of late have also pressed Seoul to seek to resolve the problem of POWs and abduction.
On Monday, Vice Unification Minister Shin Un-sang said his government would push for the repatriation of the South Koreans held by the North at the expense of "economic costs."
"The issue (of POWs and kidnapping) remains unsettled for the past five decades. It should be resolved without further delay," Shin told a KBS radio program.
Shin said the government would unveil detailed plans sooner or later to bring back the South Koreans detained in the North. But he ruled out cash aid to the North for their repatriation.
Last week, Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok touched on the deal for POWs, saying it may incur costs to bring back the South Korean detainees. He also cited the case when West Germany paid material benefits to get political prisoners from East Germany before their unification.
"I expect the people to accept the (financial) burdens to resolve the issue of POWs and abductees," Lee told reporters, in an apparent bid to test opinions of tax-payers.
Lee, Seoul's top security policymaker as chief of the presidential National Security Council, is scheduled to travel to Pyongyang for Cabinet-level talks slated for April 21-24. The ministerial talks, which would be the 18th since the landmark inter-Korean summit 2000, are the highest-level dialogue channel to coordinate cross-border reconciliation and cooperation.
Ahead of the talks, North Korea, which has refused food aid from U.S.-led international agencies beginning this year, requested on Monday that South Korea send an additional 300,000 tons of fertilizer aid to the North, Seoul's Unification Ministry said.
Earlier this year, North Korea asked South Korea to provide it with 450,000 tons of free fertilizer, and the South shipped 150,000 tons which will be used for the spring sowing season.
The North's demand for further fertilizer aid is expected to be an agenda item for next week's Cabinet-level talks.
Seoul is likely to provide the remaining 300,000 tons of fertilizer to the North which has suffered from chronic food shortages. The South has provided more than 1.9 million tons of free fertilizer to the North since 1999.
The impoverished country has depended on international handouts to feed a large number of its 23 million people since a nationwide famine hit the country in the mid-1990s which killed an estimated 2 million people. The famine is over, but North Korea does not produce enough food on its own to feed its population, according to the U.N relief agency.
South Korea plans to persuade the North to hand over the detained South Koreans in return for massive economic aid for the impoverished country, including investment to improve its poor infrastructure, officials say.
©2006 by United Press International