Red Cross chief visits Pyongyang for talks on medical cooperation

SEOUL, May 16 (Yonhap News) -- South Korea's Red Cross chief Han Wan-sang was to embark Tuesday on a five-day visit to North Korea's capital Pyongyang to discuss ways to increase cooperation between the countries' medical institutes, Red Cross officials said.

Accompanied by some 40 officials from the country's pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, the head of the South Korean Red Cross is to fly directly to Pyongyang using a western route, the officials said.

The visit is mainly aimed at discussing ways to expand medical exchanges between the Koreas, and may include a new program to train North Korean medical personnel, according to a Red Cross official.

"The health and medical field requires cooperation [between the Koreas] for the future of the [reunified] nation," Chang Suk-june, secretary-general of the Red Cross, said Monday in an interview with a local radio station.

"The most important issue is to increase personnel exchanges, and Han will also negotiate training for [the North's] medical personnel and Seoul's provision of medical equipment," Chang said.

North Korea observers here also believe Pyongyang was likely to request additional medical and other humanitarian aid.

Seoul regularly provides large amounts of medicine and other humanitarian aid, such as food and fertilizer, through the Red Cross to the impoverished North, a large number of whose estimated 22 million people have depended on international handouts for their daily meals since the mid 1990s.

The Red Cross chief was to deliver some 3.7 billion won (3.9 million USD) worth of medical supplies and equipment to the communist state, according to the Red Cross officials.

Han's visit also comes ahead of a new round of an inter-Korean Red Cross program to reunite families separated by the division of the Koreas in June.

Although traveling separately, a group of 21 South Koreans were also to begin a five-day visit to the North Korean capital from Tuesday to take part in a Taekwondo event there, according to the Unification Ministry.

Jointly organized by the North's Taekwondo association and the International Taekwon-do Federation, the five-day event is expected to bring together hundreds of practitioners of the Korean martial art from around the world.