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S. Korea’s ex-first lady set to make high-profile visit to N. Korea

August 4, 2015
Ex-first lady of South Korea Lee Hee-ho (Yonhap)

Ex-first lady of South Korea Lee Hee-ho (Yonhap)

SEOUL, Aug. 5 (Yonhap) — The widow of former President Kim Dae-jung was to visit North Korea Wednesday for four days in a rare and high-profile trip that may help improve long-strained inter-Korean relations.

Lee Hee-ho, 93, who was the South’s first lady during Kim’s five-year tenure until 2003, will leave for the North later in the day via a low-budget local plane to stay there until Saturday. She plans to deliver knitted hats and clothes to North Korean children.

Her visit is in the spotlight on hopes that it may help ease tension on a divided peninsula as this year marks the 70th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule and the division of the two Koreas.

Inter-Korean ties have been further strained in recent years following the North’s torpedoing of a South Korean warship and its shelling of a border island in 2010. Seoul imposed economic sanctions on Pyongyang over the deadly incidents in May of that year.

The two Koreas have not held high-level talks since February 2014 amid the North’s ceaseless provocations. The North claimed in May that it had successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Lee’s late husband was the architect of the “sunshine” policy that actively pushed for cross-border exchanges and reconciliation. He held the first inter-Korean summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000. At that time, she accompanied her husband to Pyongyang.

“The fact that Lee visits North Korea itself is a big message,” a ranking official at the Unification Ministry told reporters on July 23.

The government has not asked Lee to convey a special message on inter-Korean relations to the North on the Seoul government’s behalf, as Lee will visit the North in a private capacity.

Whether she could meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is the focus of the South’s media attention, though nothing has been decided.

Lee briefly met with Kim in December 2011 when she visited Pyongyang to pay tribute upon the death of Kim Jong-il, the father of the North’s current leader. But the trip was limited to offering condolences and no other matters were discussed at that time.

The ex-first lady expressed her wish to visit the North in October, but she had to postpone her trip due to cold winter weather even as Pyongyang accepted her request.

She sent a wreath of flowers in December to the North to mark the third anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il. In response, the North’s young leader said in a letter that he was “looking forward to having Lee in Pyongyang once the weather got warmer in 2015.”

In April, former aides to the late President Kim made a request for preparatory talks over Lee’s visit, but the North rejected the request, citing “complex inter-Korean circumstances.”

Her itinerary includes a visit to a children’s hospital and a nursery facility in Pyongyang and Mount Myohyang in North Pyongan Province, north of Pyongyang.

The Kim Dae-jung Peace Center, the organizer for the trip, said that the 19-member delegation does not include high-profile politicians or former government officials such as opposition lawmaker Park Jie-won. South Korean journalists are not allowed to accompany the delegation.