North Korea is to send its athletes to the Winter Olympics in the South next month, the rivals said yesterday after their first formal talks in more than two years.
The two sides also decided to hold military talks to ease tensions and to restore a military hotline closed since February 2016.
Seoul and Olympic organizers have been keen for Pyongyang — which boycotted the 1988 Seoul Summer Games — to take part in what they repeatedly proclaimed a “peace Olympics” in Pyeongchang.
Photo: AP / Yonhap
“The North Korean side will dispatch a National Olympic Committee delegation, athletes, cheerleaders, art performers’ squad, spectators, a taekwondo demonstration team and a press corps, and the South will provide necessary amenities and facilities,” they said in a joint statement.
Yesterday’s talks were held in Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone.
The North’s delegation walked over the Military Demarcation Line marking the border to the Peace House venue on the southern side, just meters from where a defector ran across in a hail of bullets two months ago.
Looking businesslike, the South Korean Minister of Unification Cho Myoung-gyon and the North’s chief delegate, Ri Son-gwon, shook hands at the entrance to the building and again across the negotiating table.
“Let’s present the people with a precious new year’s gift,” Ri said. “There is a saying that a journey taken by two lasts longer than the one traveled alone.”
The atmosphere was friendlier than at past meetings, and Cho told Ri: “The people have a strong desire to see the North and South move toward peace and reconciliation.”
However, there was no mention in the joint statement of a proposal by Seoul to resume reunions of families left divided by the Korean War, or of an offer by the North to send a high-level delegation to the Games.
Only two athletes from the North have qualified for the Games so far, but hundreds of young female North Korean cheerleaders have created a buzz at three previous international sporting events in the South.
The group might stay on a cruise ship in Sokcho, about an hour’s drive from the Olympic venue.
According to South Korean reports, any high-level delegation accompanying the team could include North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Yo-jong, who is a senior member of the ruling Workers’ Party.
Both sides expressed the desire to address wider questions, but Pyongyang has snubbed previous attempts by Seoul to set up further family reunions, saying it would not do so unless several of its citizens are returned by the South.
“The South and the North agreed to activate cross-border contacts, passages, exchanges and cooperation, and to seek national reconciliation and unity in various sectors,” the statement said, without giving details.
It was unclear when the proposed military talks — which would be the first of their kind since 2014 — would be held.
“The two sides will reach a smooth agreement on Pyeongchang, but what happens afterward?” Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-hwan said before the announcement. “In terms of pending issues regarding the improvement of inter-Korean ties, it won’t be easy to immediately reach an agreement.”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats