South Korea's top official on relations with the North arrived in Pyongyang yesterday to join celebrations of the fifth anniversary of the only summit between leaders of the two Koreas amid tension over the North's nuclear weapons ambitions.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young was expected to press the North to return to nuclear disarmament talks that have been stalled for nearly a year.
Chung heads a government delegation from Seoul to festivities marking the June 2000 summit between North Korea's Kim Jong-il and then-South Korean president Kim Dae-jung.
PHOTO: AP
Chung is to meet tomorrow with Kim Yong-nam, the North's ceremonial head of state. He said nothing had yet been decided about a possible meeting during his four-day visit with Kim Jong-il.
"I hope the day will come when going back and forth between Seoul and Pyongyang will no longer be a special thing," Chung said before his departure, which was delayed for about two hours due to bad weather.
Chung joins a civic delegation of 295 South Koreans who arrived earlier yesterday with members of labor unions, religious and agricultural groups and politicians.
"The conflict between the North and the United States has deepened over the North's latest nuclear problem ... and there is a growing sense of a crisis that it will develop into an extreme situation no one wants," the delegation said in a statement before leaving Seoul.
This year's celebrations "will put an end to the history of disintegration and confrontation ... and show to the world our peoples' joint will to preserve peace in whatever situation," the delegation said.
The North's main state-run Rodong Sinmun daily also heralded the upcoming celebrations that "reflect our peoples' goals and will to open a new chapter of cooperation," according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
However, in a veiled reference to tensions between the Koreas, the paper noted difficulties in staging the celebrations due to "obstacles by anti-unification forces both at home and abroad."
The South was forced to cut its delegation in half after the North went back on agreements reached at inter-Korean talks last month -- the first such contact in 10 months.
The South Koreans were to join a march through Pyongyang ahead of opening ceremonies for the anniversary celebration last night at Kim Il-sung Stadium.
A delegation from Hyundai conglomerate, including chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, has also arrived in Pyongyang for the celebration, KCNA said. The company has various economic projects in the North.
Since the 2000 meeting, some 10,000 relatives separated by the heavily armed border have held brief reunions and the two Koreas are working together at an industrial park just inside the North.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS