North Korea said Friday that an August reunion of Korean families separated by war may not happen if South Korea doesn't immediately return some of its citizens who arrived in the South in recent years.
The 2016 arrival of a group of 12 female employees from a North Korean-run restaurant in China has been a source of contention between the rival Koreas. North Korea has accused South Korea of kidnapping them, while South Korea says they decided to resettle on their own will.
A TV screen shows a blurred photo of North Korean restaurant workers in China, during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Kore, Friday, July 20, 2018. North Korea said that an August reunion of Korean families separated by war may not happen if South Korea doesn't immediately return some of its citizens who arrived in the South in recent years. The signs read: "The two Koreas agreed to hold a reunion of Korean families." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
North Korea has often used the women as a reason to rebuff South Korea's repeated request to allow elderly citizens split during the 1950-53 Korean War to reunite with each other temporarily. But Friday's statement is the North's first attempt to link the fate of the women to the August reunion and comes amid worries that a global diplomacy to push the North to give up its nuclear weapons is making little headway after months of detente.
The North's state-run Uriminzokkiri website said that the reunion and overall inter-Korean ties could face "obstacles" if Seoul doesn't send back the women.
Seoul's Unification Ministry said it has no comment on the Uriminzokkiri dispatch.
There has been mounting speculation that some of the 12 North Korean women might have been truly duped into coming to South Korea.
After meeting some of the women earlier this month, Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations' independent investigator on human rights in North Korea, told reporters in Seoul that they told him they did not know they were heading to South Korea when they departed China.
"Some of them, they were taken to the Republic of Korea without knowing that they were coming here," Quintana said, referring to South Korea by its formal name. "If they were taken against their will, that may (be) considered a crime. It is the duty and responsibility of the government of the Republic of Korea to investigate."
South Korean media had earlier carried a similar report, citing interviews with some of the women and their North Korean male manager who came to South Korea with them.
The women's arrival happened when South Korea was governed by a conservative government, which took a tough stance on the North's nuclear program. South Korea's current liberal President Moon Jae-in wants to expand ties with North Korea, but repatriating any of the women would be a delicate matter as many experts say relatives of those who decide to stay in the South will likely face reprisals by the North Korean government.
Since the end of the Korean War, more than 31,000 North Koreans fled to South Korea for political, economic and other reasons, according to South Korean government records. Seoul has never repatriated any North Korean defector, though a handful of them reportedly returned home after failing to adapting to new lives in the South.
The Koreas ban ordinary citizens from visiting relatives on the other side of the border or contacting them without special government permission. Since 2000, however, nearly 20,000 Koreans have been allowed to reunite with their loved ones for several days under on-and-off reunion programs. The last reunion was held in 2015.
While the South wants more reunions, North Korea prefers infrequent meetings because it doesn't want to waste what it sees as an important diplomatic bargaining chip and worries about increasing its people's awareness of the outside world, according to experts.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Mike Johnson will delay sending the House's articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week as previously planned after Republican senators requested more time Tuesday to build support for holding a full trial.
The sudden change of plans cast fresh doubts on the proceedings, the historic first impeachment of a Cabinet secretary in roughly 150 years. Seeking to rebuke the Biden administration's handling of the southern border, House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February but delayed sending the articles while they finished work on government funding legislation.
Johnson had planned to send the impeachment charges to the Senate on Wednesday evening. But as it became clear that Democrats, who hold majority control of the chamber, had the votes to quickly dismiss them, Senate Republicans requested that Johnson delay until next week. They hoped the tactic would prolong the process.
While Republicans argued Tuesday that forgoing a full Senate trial would break precedent, most Senate Republicans voted to do just that when Donald Trump, the former president, was impeached a second time on charges he incited an insurrection in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Their effort to halt the proceedings failed. Trump was ultimately acquitted in the Senate trial.
“Our members want to have an opportunity not only to debate but also to have some votes on issues they want to raise,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican Senate leader. Under procedural rules, senators are required to convene as jurors the day after the articles of impeachment are transmitted for a trial.
“There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial," Johnson’s spokesman, Taylor Haulsee, said in a statement announcing the delay.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. D-N.Y., who has decried the impeachment push as a “sham,” suggested Democrats still plan to deal with the charges quickly.
"We’re ready to go whenever they are. We are sticking with our plan. We’re going to move this as expeditiously as possible,” Schumer said.
“Impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements,” he told reporters earlier Tuesday.
House Republicans charged in two articles of impeachment that Mayorkas has not only refused to enforce existing law but also breached the public trust by lying to Congress and saying the border was secure.
Democrats — and a few Republicans — say the charges amount to a policy dispute, not the Constitution's bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.
“Ultimately, I think it’s virtually certain that there will not be the conviction of someone when the constitutional test has not been met,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
Romney said he was not sure how he would vote on the Senate’s process but wanted to at least express his view that “Mayorkas has done a terrible job, but he’s following the direction of the president and has not met the constitutional test of a high crime or misdemeanor.”
Still, with elections approaching, Republicans want to force Congress to grapple with the Biden administration's handling of the southern border as long as possible.
“I think there are a lot of Democrats who really want to avoid the vote. I don’t blame them. I mean, this is the number one issue on the minds of Americans,” Thune said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who is facing a tough reelection bid in Ohio, called the impeachment trial a “distraction" and pointed to Republican senators rejecting a bipartisan deal aimed at tamping down the number of illegal border crossings from Mexico.
“Instead of doing this impeachment — the first one in 100 years — why are we not doing a bipartisan border deal?” Brown said.
Prior to Mayorkas, only one U.S. cabinet official had ever been impeached. Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876. A House investigation found evidence that he had received kickback payments while administering government contracts.
Belknap resigned, but the Senate still held a trial. The votes on all five impeachment charges against Belknap fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction.
FILE - Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testifies during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill, Nov. 8, 2023, in Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson will delay sending the House’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week as planned. Republican senators requested more time Tuesday to build a case for a full trial. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas takes part in a joint news conference with the Guatemalan president, at the National Palace in Guatemala City, March 21, 2024. Speaker Mike Johnson will delay sending the House’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week as planned. Republican senators requested more time Tuesday to build a case for a full trial.(AP Photo/Santiago Billy)
