Assured of a trip free of protests, the Olympic torch made its first-ever relay run yesterday in North Korea.
An attentive and peaceful crowd of thousands watched the start of the relay in Pyongyang, some waving Chinese flags, footage from broadcaster APTN showed. The event was presided over by the head of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, Kim Yong-nam, who often acts as a ceremonial state leader.
North Korea, an ally of neighbor China, has been critical of disruptions of the torch relay elsewhere and has supported Beijing in its crackdown against violent protests in Tibet.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was not seen at the event but was “paying great interest to the success of the Olympic torch relay,” said Pak Hak-son, chairman of the North’s Olympic committee, a report by Japan’s Kyodo News agency from Pyongyang said.
The relay began from beneath the large sculpted flame that tops the obelisk of the Juche Tower, which commemorates the national ideology of “self-reliance.”
At the start of the run, Kim Yong-nam passed the torch to Pak Du-ik, who played on North Korea’s 1966 World Cup soccer team that made it to the quarter-finals. As he began the 20km route through Pyongyang, thousands more cheering people lined city streets waving pink paper flowers and small flags with the Beijing Olympics logo and chanting “Welcome! Welcome!”
Other torch bearers were also seen running through a Pyongyang street, escorted by several people in training suits and some vehicles and motorcycles, but there was notably lighter security than seen on other torch relay stops.
The relay finished at Kim Il-sung Stadium, which was filled with tens of thousands of people, Xinhua said.
defector
Meanwhile, a North Korean officer fled across the heavily armed border with the South, the first officer to do so in about 10 years, a South Korean military official said yesterday.
A Joint Chiefs of Staff official said the defection took place on Sunday. Yonhap news agency quoted a government official as saying it had occured near the Panmunjom truce village set up in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the peninsula for more than 50 years.
The officer was only identified by his family name Ri. Seoul usually keeps high-profile defectors under wraps for months or years as it debriefs them.
Yonhap news agency quoted a military official as saying that the North Korean was the first commissioned officer to defect to South Korea across the border since 1998.
The two Koreas, which are still technically at war, have more than 1 million troops positioned on either side of the razor-wired and mine-strewn border.
There are no fences in the Panmunjom truce village, which straddles the border and is within the 4km-wide DMZ.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS