|
|
Change Your Life! |
North and South Korea to hold first summit meeting |
|
|
News
|
|
April 11, 2000
SEOUL, APR 10 (AP) - The leaders of North Korea and South Korea will hold a summit meeting in June in the biggest step toward a lasting peace on the tense Korean peninsula, the two countries announced Monday.
In Seoul, a South Korean minister said President Kim Dae-jung will travel to North Korea for a "historic meeting" with his counterpart, Kim Jong Il. |
|
Unification Minister Park Jae-kyu said the two Koreas agreed on the June 12-14 summit to "promote national reconciliation, unity, exchanges and peaceful unification."
North Korea confirmed plans for the summit in a statement that it released simultaneously.
"Both sides decided to have a preliminary contact to discuss procedural matters" this month ahead of the summit, said the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea's foreign news outlet.
It would be the first summit between the two rival Korean states since the division of their peninsula into the communist North and the U.S.-backed South in 1945. The two countries fought a 1950-53 war and never signed a permanent peace treaty.
Today, the two countries share a heavily fortified border and 37,000 U.S. soldiers are based in the South to ward off any threat from the North.
The Koreas had planned to hold their first summit in the summer of 1994. But the meeting was cancelled a few weeks before its scheduled date because of the death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Park Jie-won, South Korea's culture and tourism minister, saidthe agreement proved the success of his government's policy oftrying to engage North Korea with business and other contacts.
"This is clear evidence that North Korea has full confidence in President Kim Dae-jung's engagement policy with North Korea," he said.
Monday's announcements in Seoul and Pyongyang were likely to boost the fortunes of South Korea's ruling Millennium Democratic Party in parliamentary elections on Thursday.
Kim has been under domestic pressure to show results from his gradualist policy of trying to engage North Korea, which critics say has failed to win concessions and has instead funded Pyongyang's military machine.
The agreement followed a series of secret talks between the two sides in China as well as upbeat statements by top Seoul government officials. Last week, South Korea's president indicated that the two Koreas were are on the verge of a diplomatic breakthrough.
During a visit in March to Berlin, Germany, Kim said South Korea was ready to provide more humanitarian aid and help impoverished North Korea rebuild its tattered economy.
North Korea had shunned a top-level dialogue with Seoul, which it has described as a puppet of U.S. policy in the region.
But in recent months, North Korea has been reaching out to the world in an indication that it is breaking out of decades of isolation.
Early this year, North Korea established diplomatic relations with Italy. It is either in talks or in contact with a number of countries, including the United States, Britain, Japan and Australia.
Kim Yong Nam, speaker of North Korea's parliament and ceremonial head of state, and Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun are now in Cuba attending a summit of the Group of 77, an association of 133 non-aligned countries.
North Korea's diplomatic overtures could be an act of desperation as much as a desire for reconciliation.
Years of deadly famine brought on by drought, floods and economic mismanagement forced the totalitarian state to appeal for food donations from international donors, including the United States. Aid workers say the situation remains precarious.
Many obstacles to a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula remain.
North Korea's missile and nuclear programs and human rights record are a great source of concern to officials in Seoul, Washington and elsewhere. North Korea wants the United States to remove it from a U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorist activities.
Pyongyang was put on the list because of involvement in the midair bombing of a South Korean airliner near Burma, now Myanmar, in 1987. All 115 people on board the Korean Air plane died.
|
||
