Assured of a trip free of protests, the Olympic torch made its first-ever relay run yesterday in North Korea.
An attentive and peaceful crowd of thousands watched the start of the relay in Pyongyang, some waving Chinese flags, footage from broadcaster APTN showed. The event was presided over by the head of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, Kim Yong-nam, who often acts as a ceremonial state leader.
North Korea, an ally of neighbor China, has been critical of disruptions of the torch relay elsewhere and has supported Beijing in its crackdown against violent protests in Tibet.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was not seen at the event but was “paying great interest to the success of the Olympic torch relay,” said Pak Hak-son, chairman of the North’s Olympic committee, a report by Japan’s Kyodo News agency from Pyongyang said.
The relay began from beneath the large sculpted flame that tops the obelisk of the Juche Tower, which commemorates the national ideology of “self-reliance.”
At the start of the run, Kim Yong-nam passed the torch to Pak Du-ik, who played on North Korea’s 1966 World Cup soccer team that made it to the quarter-finals. As he began the 20km route through Pyongyang, thousands more cheering people lined city streets waving pink paper flowers and small flags with the Beijing Olympics logo and chanting “Welcome! Welcome!”
Other torch bearers were also seen running through a Pyongyang street, escorted by several people in training suits and some vehicles and motorcycles, but there was notably lighter security than seen on other torch relay stops.
The relay finished at Kim Il-sung Stadium, which was filled with tens of thousands of people, Xinhua said.
defector
Meanwhile, a North Korean officer fled across the heavily armed border with the South, the first officer to do so in about 10 years, a South Korean military official said yesterday.
A Joint Chiefs of Staff official said the defection took place on Sunday. Yonhap news agency quoted a government official as saying it had occured near the Panmunjom truce village set up in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the peninsula for more than 50 years.
The officer was only identified by his family name Ri. Seoul usually keeps high-profile defectors under wraps for months or years as it debriefs them.
Yonhap news agency quoted a military official as saying that the North Korean was the first commissioned officer to defect to South Korea across the border since 1998.
The two Koreas, which are still technically at war, have more than 1 million troops positioned on either side of the razor-wired and mine-strewn border.
There are no fences in the Panmunjom truce village, which straddles the border and is within the 4km-wide DMZ.
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