Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 16, 1994 TAG: 9408160095
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The announcement came a few hours after South Korea's president offered to give a $2 billion nuclear reactor to the communist North if that regime would open its nuclear program to outside inspectors. There was no immediate response from the North on that offer.
North Korea answered a Friday proposal by South Korea to address human rights issues such as divided families and the fate of about 440 South Koreans believed to be held in the North against their will.
``The South Korean Red Cross must first resolve the human rights issues within the South,'' the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch monitored by Seoul's Naewoe Press.
The dispatch criticized South Korea for invoking its strict national security laws to crack down on student activists who publicly mourn for longtime North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
About 200 people were reported injured during clashes late Sunday and early Monday between riot police and thousands of students trying to hold a pro-North Korea rally at Seoul National University.
Radical South Korean students regard Kim Il Sung as a national hero who fought against Japan's colonial rule of Korea. Most South Koreans, however, revile him as the man who started the 1950-53 Korean War, in which more than 2.5 million people died.
The two nations have pursued hot-and-cold efforts in recent years to improve relations and possibly start on the road to reunification.
Tensions have been high for more than a year over suspicions that North Korea is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Recent U.S. diplomatic efforts have raised hopes for an amicable settlement.
South Korean President Kim Young-sam offered Monday to provide the North with a modern nuclear reactor if the North proved it was not making atomic weapons.
The offer supported an agreement in which the United States promised to help provide reactors and diplomatic recognition to North Korea and Pyongyang pledged to freeze its nuclear program.
North Korea has demanded it be given new light-water reactors. Such reactors are safer than the Soviet-style graphite reactors it uses. The reactors also produce far less plutonium, which can be used in atomic warheads.
by CNB