A South Korean delegation is to travel to the North Korean border town of Kaesong early next week to discuss a scheduled meeting between the country's former President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the Unification Ministry said Friday.
The four-member delegation, headed by former Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, is to hold talks with North Korean delegates from Monday, according to the ministry.
The former president's visit to Pyongyang will be his second following the one in 2000 during which he held the first-ever inter-Korean summit with the reclusive North Korean leader.
Pyongyang has been staying away from the six-way nuclear negotiations since November, demanding Washington lift financial sanctions on a Macau bank suspected of circulating counterfeit U.S.
dollars printed in the North.
South Korea's point man on North Korean affairs, Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok, had claimed that the former president is the only person "who can grab the North Korean leader by the ear" and persuade him to end his boycott of the nuclear negotiations, which are also attended by South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The meeting, however, follows the sudden cancellation of scheduled tests of two cross-border railways. The former South Korean president wished to use one of them, linking Seoul to the North Korean capital Pyongyang, during his scheduled visit to the communist state late next month.
A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "We cannot completely rule out the possibility" of the former president traveling by train, but many believe chances of this happening are now slim or non-existent.
The North said it was unable to conduct the railroad test-runs, which were scheduled for Thursday, until the countries' militaries sign an agreement guaranteeing the safety of people using the cross-border train service.
The Seoul government rapped the communist state in a telegram sent to the North Korean head of an inter-Korean economic cooperation body Thursday, saying the North Korean government should have coordinated the scheduled train runs with its military before signing the agreement for the test-runs with Seoul.
A first meeting on the former president's second trip to the North Korean capital in the North's Mount Geumgang last week ended only after the sides agreed that the visit would be taken in the latter half of next month and last for four days.
The South Korean delegates requested that the former president be allowed to use the cross-border railroad for his planned visit, but the North Korean side proposed Kim use a direct flight instead, according to the chief delegate, Jeong, a former unification minister under the Kim Dae-jung administration.
The sides are expected to conclude details of Kim's planned visit to Pyongyang at next week's meeting, but the duration of the scheduled talks has yet to be set, according to ministry officials.
Seoul, May 26 (Yonhap News)
Koreas to discuss former president's Pyongyang visit next week |
