Seoul, August 20: North Korea will send high-ranking officials to mourn the South’s former president Kim Dae-Jung as hopes rise for an end to months-long disputes over its missile tests.
The North’s official news agency on Thursday confirmed the dispatch, which is to be headed by Kim Ki-Nam, a secretary of the ruling Communist party.
Seoul officials said two close aides to leader Kim Jong-Il would be in the mourning delegation. Apart from Kim Ki-Nam, it would include Kim Yang-Gon, a party official in charge of inter-Korean affairs.
The team is scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Friday to pay respects, but will depart on Saturday, a day short of Sunday’s state funeral for Kim Dae-Jung.
The 85-year-old Kim, who died on Tuesday, was South Korea’s president between 1998 and 2003, during which the former democracy activist held the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000.
The North’s mourning delegation is viewed as the latest conciliatory gesture from Pyongyang, whose provocative nuclear missile test in May and the following launch of ballistic missiles sparked cross-border disputes with US-backed Seoul.
North Korea earlier released a detained South Korean and on Monday expressed willingness to resume tourist trips and family reunions for South Koreans.
While the two Koreas have severed all their diplomatic ties, South Korean unification ministry said there were no plans so far for any political talks, suggesting the two governments’ officials may contact secretly.
On Thursday, South Korea was to send North Korea a proposal “calling for three-day Red Cross talks between the two sides from August 26” in hopes of reviving reunions for families separated by the peninsula’s decades-long division.
The reunion program virtually began after the 2000 inter-Korean summit but has been put on hold amid worsening relations between Pyongyang and the government which took office in Seoul in February 2008.
—–Agencies