World Notes

A mutual problem took Red Cross representatives from North Korea over the border to talk with their counterparts in the long-hated South last week. It was the plight of some 10 million people who have been separated from their families, unable even to write letters to one another, since Korea was partitioned at the time of its liberation from the Japanese in 1945. The meeting got off to a rocky start when North Korean delegates refused to allow their South Korean hosts to show them the new sports complex in Seoul, where the 1988 Summer Olympic Games are to be held. The following night the North Koreans declined to attend a movie about the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, boycotted by North Korea and most other Communist countries.

Despite the prickly start, the two sides agreed to continue their talks on Aug. 27 and, in the meantime, to hold a symbolic reunion of a few families on Aug. 15, the 40th anniversary of the liberation. The generally amicable tone of the two days of talks was set by the South's chief delegate, Lee Yung Dug, who told his northern counterpart, Li Chong Yul, "I hope the days when true brotherly love could be shown between us come early."