Under the agreement, Seoul and Pyongyang will exchange on Sept. 15 lists of 250 and 200 applicants, respectively, who claim to have relatives across the border. They will, then, narrow down the numbers based on further confirmation of the applicants’ status and exchange the final lists of 100 people each by Oct. 8.

The reunions will be held in two separate rounds, one for 100 South Korean applicants seeking their North Korean relatives, and vice versa.

The South’s list will include 50 more applicants who wish to meet with relatives thought to have been captured by the North as prisoners of war or to have been abducted, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. 

Since 2000 when the first family reunions took place, 35 people, who were purportedly taken by the communist regime against their will, have met with their relatives from the South through official reunion events.

At the talks that began at 10:50 a.m. on Monday and continued for some 24 hours, the two sides also agreed to hold additional Red Cross talks “in the near future” to discuss a range of issues surrounding the separated families, the ministry said in a press release.

“The two Koreas shared the view that they should work together to fundamentally address this humanitarian issue,” said Lee Deok-haeng, who led the three-member South Korean delegation, during a news conference.

The Red Cross talks were held after the two sides agreed on Aug. 25 to hold the reunions around Chuseok, a major Korean holiday that falls on Sept. 27, as part of a comprehensive deal to defuse military tensions. 

The major bone of contention during the talks was the date for the reunions. 

Seoul hoped to hold the reunions at the earliest date possible, particularly before Oct. 10, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, during which time observers say Pyongyang could launch provocations such as a missile launch to strengthen internal unity and show off its military presence.

But Pyongyang wanted to hold the event in late October, citing the amount of time to prepare for the event, including time for finalizing its own list of those to attend the reunions, Seoul officials said. 

At the talks, the South Korean side pushed to put a series of issues on the agenda to “fundamentally” resolve the issues of separated families. The agenda included exchanging lists of the surviving members of the divided families, allowing the family members to exchange letters and meet through video links and holding reunions on a regular basis. 

The agreement on the family reunions is expected to reinforce the momentum for a cross-border thaw. But uncertainties linger as analysts say the North could engage in provocative acts that could dampen the emergent reconciliatory mood.

The South’s Red Cross will begin its selection of the applicants through a lottery system on Wednesday, officials said. It will first pick 500 out of the 66,000 people who claim to have relatives in the North and remain still alive, before finalizing the 100-member list later.

Seoul has regarded the issue of the separated families as an urgent humanitarian one, a reason President Park Geun-hye proposed during her Aug. 15 Liberation Day speech that the two Koreas work together to identify those with loved ones across the border.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)