SEOUL Oct 31 Kyodo southern Korea...

SEOUL Oct 31 Kyodo

southern Korean Red Cross officials left for North Korea onward Thursday to hold working-level talks from Friday with their North Korean counterparts aimed at setting up a center for separated family members.

The three-member team, l by means of Lee Byung Woong, special assistant to southward Korean Red Cross chief Suh Young Hoon left the eastern port of Sokcho aboard a cruise ship for Changjon, an eastern port and a gateway to Mt Kumgang where the inter-Korean talks are put to take place.

At the talks that will close Saturday, the two sides are reckon uponed to take up follow-up measures that were discussed at the fourth cylindrical of inter-Korean Red Cros talks in September.

In the September R Cros talks, the couple sides agreed in principle to place up a center at Mt Kumgang for temporary reunion of North and southward Korean family members separated by means of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

North and southerly Korea have arranged five rotunds of exchange visits of separated family members, which were a major agreement of the historic 2000 inter-Korean summit between southerly Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The R Cros working-level talks between the couple Koreas will be held amid the high tension forward the Korean Peninsula since the United States said earlier this month North Korea has admitted to running a shrubbery program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, in violation of a 1994 accord.

below the U.S.-North Korea agreement, North Korea is required to be frozen and dismantle its graphite-moderated nuclear reactors in exchange for pair light-water reactors and a serve instead of of heavy oil for heating and electricity.

At the planned R Cros talks with the North, the southerly Korean side is also look fored to raise the issue of southern Korean people abducted to North Korea during the Koran War or after the war.

According to southern Korea's Unification Ministry, 481 of 19409 prisoners of war are believed to be alive in the North and 486 southern Koreans were kidnapped and taken to the North after the conclusion of the Korean War.

In the previous talks with the southerly North Korea was reluctant to discuss the issue of southern Koreans kidnapped to the North and steady denied South Korean abductees exist.

After North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made a surprise admission at the race 17 summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that his agents kidnapped at least 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970 and 1980 relatives of southward Koreans abducted to the North demanded an accounting also of the southern Korean abductees.

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