North Korea on Monday proposed arranging family reunions on Wednesday for its four nationals who have chosen to defect to South Korea after their fishing boat carrying 27 others strayed south across the western sea border last month, the South's Unification Ministry said.
South Korea essentially refused the proposal, saying instead that its Red Cross officials will meet with their North Korean counterparts on the same day as proposed by the North but without the four North Koreans who have expressed their wish to defect.
In a message to its South Korean counterpart, the North Korean Red Cross proposed holding a working-level Red Cross meeting with South Korea on Wednesday at the truce village of Panmunjom straddling the two countries, the ministry here said in a statement.
During the meeting, the North planned to bring the families of the four nationals who are refusing to return home with their 27 fellow countrymen who came here by crossing the Yellow Sea border on Feb. 5, the ministry said, quoting the North Korean message.
"The North is demanding that our side bring the four nationals while three North Korean Red Cross officials will come to the meeting with their families," the message was quoted as saying.
The standoff over the handling of the 31 North Koreans, who underwent a month of questioning in South Korea, is a new thorn between the two countries, whose relations plunged to the worst level in years after the North shelled a South Korean island late last year.
South Korea claims four people in the group have decided not to return home according to their own will, and has offered to send back only the remaining 27 through the border truce village of Panmunjom.
On Friday, North Korea rejected the South Korean move, saying the other four must be returned and accusing Seoul of forcing and coercing them into defection in a plot against Pyongyang.
In a briefing on Monday, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said his government remains firm in its position not to repatriate the four North Koreans who want to stay.
"There is no change in our basic position that a decision made based on the free will of a person must be respected," he said.
The four North Koreans wanting to stay are the 38-year-old captain, a 21-year-old nurse, a 44-year-old unemployed man and a 22-year-old female statistician, according to the ministry.
Defection is considered a sin punishable by death in North Korea. Despite the harsh penalty, defections from the impoverished state have recently risen. Since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, more than 20,000 North Koreans have arrived in South Korea, mostly via China.
Chun declined to comment on what the South would do with the 27 North Koreans if the North continued to refuse their repatriation.
There were no children among them, according to South Korean officials. They are believed to have launched from North Korea's western port city of Nampo, about 60 kilometers southwest of Pyongyang, according to officials.