SOUTH KOREA: South Korea has announced it is to send a special presidential envoy to Pyongyang next month in a major breakthrough in efforts to get strained relations between North and South Korea back on track.
The move is also seen as an attempt to ease regional tensions ahead of the start of the World Cup finals in June. The finals take place in South Korea and Japan.
In a surprise move, the South Korean President, Mr Kim Dae-jung, said yesterday he would send his close adviser, Mr Lim Dong-won, to Pyongyang for fresh talks that would be conducted "with patience and in a bold manner".
The talks would cover the "grave situation" on the divided peninsula, including the issue of family reunions, according to a spokesperson for Mr Kim , who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his "Sunshine Policy" of engaging with the North.
Mr Lim is a former unification minister and one-time head of the National Intelligence Service, South Korea's spy agency. He has played a pivotal role in North-South dialogue over the years.
He said yesterday there were three reasons he was being dispatched to the North: to prevent tension ahead of the World Cup; to keep South Korea's economic recovery on track, and to implement the June 2000 summit deal that included family reunions and other practical steps.
"Without peace and stability, the peninsula could be in deep trouble," he said "We can't host the World Cup without peace on the Korean peninsula." Official talks between the two Koreas have been on hold for several months following a tougher stand adopted by the US on North Korea.
The official North Korean news agency, KCNA, issued a simultaneous statement yesterday saying the South's envoy would visit.
"The two sides will consult on the grave situation facing the nation and issues of mutual concern related to the inter-Korean ties," it said in a two-paragraph announcement.
The two Koreas have been divided since the 1950-1953 Korean War and ties have stalled since the June 2000 summit which failed to provide enough momentum for relations to improve further.
Reunions of families divided by the Korean War, agreed at the summit, have failed to live up to expectations. So far there have been three such gatherings involving less than 5,000 people.
The US State Department yesterday welcomed news of the talks.
Relations between North Korea and the US have been strained since President Bush took office in January last year. Mr Bush named North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.
The US has also questioned whether the North is complying with a 1994 deal that froze its suspected nuclear weapons programme in exchange for Western-built power stations.
The North Korea Communist Party daily said yesterday that Mr Bush was "zealously floating the fiction of nuclear development" by North Korea.
"It is their intention to raise the cloud of the first nuclear mushroom on the Korean peninsula," it said.
Meanwhile, a German doctor was detained in Seoul yesterday for spearheading a protest at the Chinese embassy demanding that Beijing halt its crackdown on refugees from North Korea.
Dr Norbert Vollertsen, who recently helped 25 North Koreans escape to South Korea, was detained and released after he tried to lead a group of about 100 defectors and their South Korean supporters in a march on the Chinese embassy building.