Former president Kim Dae-jung’s visit to North delayed

Former President Kim Dae-jung

Trip to Pyongyang thrown into question by missile tensions

Former president Kim Dae-jung’s four-day, three-night visit to North Korea, initially scheduled to begin on June 27, has been called off indefinitely, according to an official from the former president’s office. With increased tensions with the North over their possible moves to test a missile, the official said that "now is not the appropriate time" for the former president to make a visit to Pyongyang.

Previously, efforts by the South to continue arrangements for the trip were met with frustration. The South Korean government sought to discuss the details of the visit with North Korean representatives visiting the southern city of Gwangju last week. "They said only that the North would discuss it after they returned to Pyongyang," said one government official. "They have gone back, and yet we still have not heard anything."

"If North Korea wants to watch the effects its missile activities are going to have, it might have determined that finalizing plans for Kim’s visit would lessen the desired effect," he said. "Plans haven’t fallen apart and they haven’t been cancelled, but the timing might have to be delayed."

On Tuesday Kim met for approximately one hour and 20 minutes with U.S. ambassador Alexander Vershbow, who paid a visit to the Nobel Prize laureate at the Kim Dae Jung Presidential Library. They discussed issues such as North Korea’s possible missile launch and the former president’s planned visit to Pyongyang.

On his way from the meeting, Ambassador Vershbow said he and former president Kim had, "agreed that carrying out the [missile] test at this time would only further compound North Korea’s isolation."

Asked whether he believed the rocket being prepared for launch is a missile or a satellite, Ambassador Vershbow said, "The view of the U.S. government is that this missile has military capability and we view it therefore as a serious matter, particularly in the context of North Korea’s illegal development of nuclear weapons."

"To develop a delivery system for a nuclear weapon only creates a more serious situation, and that’s why we are urging North Korea not to go through with the test, and to come back to the six-party talks," he said, adding that he told former president Kim the U.S. government seeks to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through the six-party process and to normalize relations with Pyongyang.