Seoul, August 21: A high-level North Korean delegation was set to arrive for a rare visit Friday in South Korea to pay respects to late former President Kim Dae-jung.
The trip may provide a valuable opportunity for dialogue between the two Koreas, whose relations have deteriorated since the inauguration last year of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who has linked aid to North Korea to its commitments on nuclear disarmament.
The six-member delegation of top North Korean officials is to visit the National Assembly where Kim’s body is lying in state until his state funeral Sunday.
It was not clear whether they would meet South Korean officials before returning home Saturday. Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters that no other itinerary for the North Koreans had been set.
President Lee visited the National Assembly earlier Friday to pay respects to Kim, who died Tuesday at age 85. His death unleashed an outpouring of grief for a man who campaigned for democracy at home and won the Nobel Peace Prize for a historic summit with rival North Korea.
The June 2000 summit between Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il helped thaw relations and spawned a flurry of reconciliation projects on the divided peninsula. Kim Jong Il sent a condolence message Wednesday to Kim’s family.
The delegation’s visit is part of a series of recent conciliatory gestures by North Korea to ease tensions that have been running high for months over its nuclear and missile tests.
North Korea said Thursday that it would lift restrictions on cross-border traffic, resume cargo train service and increase the number of South Koreans permitted to stay in a joint industrial zone in the North to previous levels beginning Friday.
The North imposed the restrictions in December, raising concerns about the viability of the zone — a source of hard currency for the cash-strapped country.
The Unification Ministry welcomed Thursday’s announcement, but urged North Korea not to repeat such unilateral restrictions.
North Korea has only dispatched a condolence delegation once before — a one-day trip in 2001 during mourning for Chung Ju-yung, the founder of South Korea’s Hyundai Group, which funded the first inter-Korean joint projects.
The North Korean delegation will be led by senior Workers’ Party official Kim Ki Nam and include the country’s spy chief, Kim Yang Gon, said the Unification Ministry, which handles North Korean affairs.
Chun said Seoul would send a message to North Korea later Friday urging the release of four South Korean fishermen whose boat was seized last month after it strayed into northern waters.
Kim Jong Il told the chairwoman of Hyundai Group in a recent meeting that he has instructed his military to free the fishermen, the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified senior official.
Chun said he could not confirm the report.
North Korean diplomats, meanwhile, met for a second day Thursday in the United States with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
Richardson said they told him that North Korea was ready to discuss its nuclear program with Washington. It earlier this year abandoned six-nation talks on its nuclear disarmament.
Richardson described the discussions as “very positive” Thursday.
This was the third time Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, has met with North Korean diplomats in Santa Fe since taking office as governor in 2003. He has traveled to North Korea several times.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said it had yet to be briefed by Richardson on the meetings.
“But to the extent that it would appear that they expressed an interest in bilateral talks, we are perfectly willing to have bilateral talks with North Korea, as we said many times, within the larger framework of the six-party process,” he said.
–Agencies