North Korea has canceled an annual festival of mass games and gymnastic displays because of flood damage and planned joint military exercises by South Korea and the US, a tour operator said yesterday.
"The official reasons named by the NK [North Korean] tourism authorities are the recent torrential rains and the planned joint military drill," Leonid Petrov, executive director of L&J Development and Consultancy, said in a statement.
L&J is one of a handful of foreign companies allowed to take Western tourists into North Korea, which remains largely closed to the outside world.
The next Arirang Mass Games will be held from April 15 to early May and from mid-August to mid-October next year, Petrov said.
North Korean officials said the games early next year were timed to mark the 95th anniversary of the birth of former leader Kim Il-sung and the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Army.
The news was confirmed by Yoon Gil-sang, head of the Korean American National Coordinating Council -- widely seen as a propaganda vehicle for the North Korean government -- in a statement on the group's Internet news site.
"North Korea's delegation to the United Nations has informed us that the festival was cancelled due to severe flood damage. It will be resumed next spring," he said.
Dozens of Arirang performances were planned from mid-August to mid-October this year, featuring up to 100,000 North Korean performers.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency also quoted a US-based pro-North Korean group as saying the games were canceled because of storm damage.
Good Friends, an independent South Korean human rights group, said the downpours and flooding caused much more damage than North Korea's state media has claimed, with the center of Pyong-yang partly flooded for the first time in 16 years.
Hundreds of people have been killed or were missing in North Korea after heavy rain caused floods and landslides since mid-July, according to official reports last week.
Tens of thousands of houses and official buildings along with hundreds of roads, bridges and railway tracks were destroyed or damaged, the official North Korean news agency KCNA said.
The neighborhood of Pyong-yang's May Day Stadium, the venue of the gymnastics show, had been severely destroyed by floods, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
During the festival, South Korean and North Korean delegates were to hold a joint pro-unification rally in Pyongyang from Aug. 14.
The two Koreas have sponsored pro-unification rallies marking Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule each year since a landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000.
Joint US-South Korean military exercises, known as Ulji Focus Lens 2006, are planned for Aug. 21 to Sept. 1. North Korea typically condemns the annual military exercises in the South.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
RSS