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South Korea Proposes Dates to North for Family Reunions

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea proposed to North Korea on Monday that the two sides hold a new round of family reunions between Feb. 17 and Feb. 22 to allow elderly relatives separated by the Korean War to meet for the first time in six decades.

The South offered to send South Korean Red Cross officials to the border on Wednesday to sort out details with their North Korean counterparts. Both Koreas have suggested that the reunions can be held at the Diamond Mountain tourist resort in southeast North Korea.

“We hope that family reunions will take place smoothly and create a new opportunity for South-North relations,” Kim Eui-do, a spokesman for the South Korean government, said on Monday.

On Friday, North Korea agreed to a South Korean proposal to revive family reunions, which were last held in 2010. Earlier this month, it had rejected South Korea’s idea, insisting that the political mood was not good enough to allow the reunions.

It reversed its decision as South Korea urged the North to prove in “action” that it was serious about its repeated proposals to improve ties with the South.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, called for better relations with the South during his New Year’s Day speech. But Seoul and Washington feared that the North’s latest charm offensive might be a deceptive prelude to a new round of military provocations.

Family reunions remain a highly emotional issue and a barometer of the status of relations on the peninsula. Millions of Koreans were separated from relatives when the three-year Korean War ended with a cease-fire in 1953, with the peninsula still divided. Since then, no exchanges of letters, telephone calls or emails have been allowed.

South Korea suggested that the dates for the family reunions fall before the war games that the South Korean and United States militaries are scheduled to start in late February. The North has often canceled family reunions in the past, citing such joint military drills, which it says raise the danger of war on the peninsula.

North Korea has recently insisted that if the United States and South Korea want to improve ties with North Korea, they should stop their joint war games and should not bring nuclear-capable American weapons, like aircraft carriers and long-distance bombers, to the peninsula.

Both Washington and Seoul said they would press ahead with their annual military drills. But the South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing an anonymous government official, reported on Sunday that the exercises, unlike their versions a year ago, were unlikely to involve any American aircraft carriers or B-2 and B-52 bombers, given the North’s recent overtures to ease tensions on the peninsula.

Defense Ministry officials in Seoul would not immediately confirm nor deny the report, saying that Washington and Seoul would later announce the details of their planned military drills.

The United States has often, but not always, sent an aircraft carrier to its military exercises with South Korea. In March, during the height of tensions with North Korea after its nuclear test, the Pentagon not only sent an aircraft carrier but also took the rare step of announcing practice sorties over the peninsula by nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korea Proposes Dates to North for Family Reunions. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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