S. Koreans to visit prohibited cemetery in N. Korea in first sanctioned trip |
A group of 50 South Koreans are to visit a North Korean cemetery that has been off-limits to South Koreans for the first time with government approval, the Unification Ministry said Thursday.
The group includes 26 families of former independence fighters who helped establish Korea's provisional government in Shanghai during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century, according to Cho Young-nam, director of the ministry's social and cultural exchanges bureau.
"The government plans to approve the visit considering the fact that (the families) are purely hoping to pay a visit to graves of their ancestors and cherish their spirit of national independence," Cho said in a press briefing.
The delegation is to depart for Pyongyang on Saturday via Beijing. It is scheduled to return Wednesday, according to Cho.
The five-day trip would be the first government-sanctioned visit to the North's Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery, as South Koreans are prohibited by the country's anti-communist National Security Law from visiting the place.
A group of South Korean labor activists were reprimanded in August for visiting the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery, also off-limits for South Koreans, during their visit to Pyongyang in May.
"The government, however, plans to disallow any activities (by the visiting delegates) that deviate from the original purpose of their visit," the ministry official told reporters.
Still, the government hopes the trip will help open doors for other South Koreans who wish to visit their family's burial grounds in the communist state, Cho said.
"Other separated families are also expressing wishes to visit their hometowns (in North Korea) to visit their ancestors' graves, but I don't think the North is ready" to open its doors that wide, he said.
"The government, of course, is working to have the families visit their ancestral graves in the North," the official added.
About 15 officials from the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai are believed to be buried in the North, seven of whom are buried at the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery, according to the ministry official.
The visiting families include those of five former independence fighters buried at the controversial cemetery and four others buried at a different cemetery, according to Cho.
The delegation is to be headed by Suh Young-hoon, former head of South Korea's National Red Cross. It also includes 13 officials from a civic organization working to commemorate the provisional government and 10 journalists.
Millions of people from both sides of the inter-Korean border remain separated from their family members since the end of 1950-53 Korean War, while exchanges across the heavily guarded border are nearly impossible.
The Koreas have held 14 rounds of Red Cross-sponsored reunions between the separated families since the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. But a scheduled round in August was abruptly canceled by Pyongyang, which protested Seoul's suspension of humanitarian aid for the North in July following its launching of seven ballistic missiles earlier that month.
Seoul, Sept. 28 (Yonhap News)
