A 13-year-old American plans to visit North Korea this week and perhaps meet leader Kim Jong-il to pitch his idea for a “children’s peace forest” in the demilitarized zone.
Jonathan Lee, who was born in South Korea and lives in Mississippi, was scheduled to fly to Pyongyang yesterday from Beijing with his parents, the family said.
They said North Korean officials in Beijing gave them visas on Wednesday night.
Jonathan said he expected to meet with North Korean officials and would propose the children’s peace forest, “one in which fruit and chestnut trees would be planted and where children can play.”
“We know, it sounds crazy,” said Lee’s mother, Melissa. “When he first said: ‘I think we need to go to North Korea,’ I looked at my husband and said: ‘What?’ It was a radical idea.”
The US does not have diplomatic relations with the North. The US Department of State cautions on its Web site that foreigners visiting North Korea may be arrested or expelled for engaging in unsanctioned religious or political activity and for unauthorized travel or interaction with locals.
The Lee family said they applied this summer to go to North Korea as a “special delegation” and that the North Korean ambassador to the UN in New York gave permission for their visit.
It was not possible to get comment from North Korea, which normally makes statements through its state-run news agency.
“It’s supposed to be safe, but I’m a little nervous. It’s a communist country,” Jonathan said. “I’ve watched lots of documentaries. It’s supposed to be really clean and stuff.”
His mother said the family told the US embassy in Seoul. An embassy spokesman, Aaron Tarver, said in an e-mail he was checking with embassy officers about it.
Reports by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Jonathan Lee met former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung three years ago and suggested planting chestnut trees on the Korean Peninsula and that he went to see the then-ailing former president again last year.
In a letter Jonathan Lee hopes to give to Kim Jong-il, he wrote that Kim Dae-jung talked with him about his “sunshine policy” of peaceful coexistence with the North.
“He promised he would take me with him the next time he went to the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], but sadly he passed away last year,” the letter says.
“I’d like to carry on his dream,” he said.
The idea for the visit to the North startled Jonathan’s father, Kyoung Lee, who was born and raised in South Korea and now lives with his family in the US.
“When growing up, I was always taught, don’t talk to or associate with any North Korean people, so this is kind of shocking for me that my son wants to go in,” Kyoung Lee said.
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