SENIOR NORTH Korean officials sent by leader Kim Jong-il have arrived in the South to mourn former President Kim Dae-jung in a visit that could be a sign of warmer relations between the rival states.
Dressed in black, the high-level delegation shook hands with Mr Kim’s sons, left a wreath at the National Assembly mourning site and burned incense. However, the delegation will not attend the state funeral for the late president, who dedicated much of his career to forging closer ties with the North.
The North Koreans are angry about the hardline policies of current President Lee Myung-bak and will not attend the state funeral so as not to appear at any official government events. The visit is the first to Seoul by North Korean officials in nearly two years.
Meanwhile, the Xinhua news agency in China said the country’s chief nuclear envoy, Wu Dawei, had visited the reclusive North in the first such high-level trip to Pyongyang since six-country disarmament talks broke down almost a year ago.
China, which is North Korea’s only meaningful ally, has been pushing hard for the North to rejoin the talks, in which China, both Koreas, the US, Russia and Japan have participated.
Surprisingly, China backed the UN resolution that condemned the North’s May 25th nuclear test and imposed new sanctions, but it has always steered clear of judging its “little brother” too harshly.
Mr Wu met his counterpart, but there was no report on whether he met the North’s leader during the five-day stay.
Mr Kim was respected on both sides of the border for his efforts to break down decades of postwar mistrust.
His “Sunshine Policy” of reaching out to the impoverished North with aid earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for brokering the first summit between the leaders of the two Koreas that led to a dramatic warming of ties.
He died on Tuesday aged 85. The funeral will be held tomorrow.
While Mr Kim was in favour of greater engagement with the North, Mr Lee has taken a much more combative stance. He has cut off what was a steady flow of food and energy aid to the North, given without conditions, and said that if the North wanted money, it needed to scale back the security threat it poses to the region.
The two Koreas officially remain at a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in 1953 with a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.