South Korea yesterday accepted North Korea’s proposal to hold talks about an active volcano extolled in the North as the sacred birthplace of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
The proposal North Korea made last week to discuss studies and field surveys of Mount Paektu came amid renewed attention to natural disasters following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The volcano last erupted in 1903, but minor quakes increased there between 2002 and 2005, South Korean officials say.
South Korea replied to the offer by proposing that private experts of the two Koreas meet first and discuss the issue at a South Korean border village on Tuesday next week, the South’s Ministry of Unification said.
“In the message, we said we agree on the need to cooperate,” the ministry said in a statement.
Pyongyang hasn’t immediately responded to Seoul’s offer, ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said. The talks, if realized, would be the first such meeting between the Koreas, she said.
The North’s offer comes as talks have stalled on other issues, notably nuclear disarmament-for-aid discussions involving six nations. South Korea and US officials say that North Korea must fulfill past nuclear disarmament commitments before the nuclear talks can resume.
North Korea appears to have used Japan’s earthquake and tsunami disasters to propose talks about Mount Paektu, said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University.
The proposed talks among volcano experts will likely lead to government-level talks and could work as a “lubricant” to smooth strained inter-Korean ties, Kim said.
Paektu is considered sacred by the North and touted as one of the Korean Peninsula’s most beautiful sites. North Korean lore calls it the birthplace of Kim Jong-il, though Western experts say he was born in the then-Soviet Union.
Official portraits of Kim Jong-il and his late father, North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, often show them standing in front of Paektu.
The mountain, spelled Baekdu by the South Koreans, sits on the North Korea-China border.
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