> Political rivals warm up,
Invited to lunch with South Korean president in diplomatic encounter between two rivals
SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — South Korean President Moon Jae-in met today with senior North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, over lunch at Seoul’s presidential palace in the most significant diplomatic encounter between the rivals in years.
The luncheon at the Blue House came after Kim Yo Jong and other North Korean delegates attended the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, which has brought a temporary lull in tensions over the North’s nuclear program.
At the Olympic Stadium’s VIP box, Kim Yo Jong and North Korea’s nominal head of state, Kim Yong Nam, took their place among dignitaries from around the world, including U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence who sat just a few feet away and seemed to make an effort not to acknowledge them.
Moon is desperate to use the Games as an opportunity to restore regular communication with North Korea and eventually pull it into talks over resolving the international standoff over its nuclear program.
It’s unclear whether today’s event could be used to set up bigger meetings between the Koreas.
Lawmakers from Moon’s liberal ruling party have talked about the possibility of South Korea sending a special envoy to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong Un. There’s even speculation of a summit between Kim and Moon.
Moon has already put a summit offer on the table. The first liberal president in a decade, Moon during his inauguration speech last year said he would be willing to visit Pyongyang and meet with Kim Jong Un if that helps solve the nuclear problem.
The North and South held summits in Pyongyang in 2000 and 2007, both hosted by late Kim Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un. Kim Yo Jong, 30, is the first member of North Korea’s ruling family to visit the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Analysts say the North’s decision to send her to the Olympics shows eagerness to break out from diplomatic isolation by improving relations with the South, which it could use as a bridge for approaching the United States.
As first vice director of the Central Committee of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, Kim has been an increasingly prominent figure in North Korea’s leadership and is considered one of the few people who has earned her brother’s absolute trust.
Today’s meeting was the first time a South Korean president hosted North Korean officials at the Blue House since November 2007, when late liberal president Roh Moo-hyun, the political mentor of Moon, invited then-North Korean premier Kim Yong Il for lunch following a meeting with government officials in Seoul.
Moon and Kim Yo Jong broke out broad smiles as they shook hands before the start of the opening ceremony at Pyeongchang’s Olympic Stadium. Moon had earlier met Kim Yong Nam during a dinner he hosted for visiting dignitaries.
Moon and the two North Korean delegates cheerfully clapped and waved as the athletes from the two Koreas jointly marched during the ceremony holding a blue-and-white flag symbolizing a unified Korean Peninsula. Pence and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sat nearby, looking expressionless.
Critics say it’s unclear whether revived dialogue between the Koreas could lead to immediate breakthrough on the nuclear stalemate, when it seems unlikely that the North would be willing to give up its nukes under any deal.
As if to drive the point home, Kim Jong Un used the eve of the Olympics to throw a massive military parade in Pyongyang that was highlighted by several huge intercontinental ballistic missiles rolled out in launcher trucks. Analysts said that the missiles, which were successfully flight tested three times last year, could potentially reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected. The North also last year conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date.
In a meeting hours before Friday’s opening ceremony, Abe warned Moon not to fall for North Korea’s “smile diplomacy” during the Olympics, according to Moon’s office. Pence carried a similar message during his trip to Japan and South Korea.
Abe discussed North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and brought up the issue of Japanese nationals who were abducted by the North decades ago when he shook hands and briefly spoke with Kim Yong Nam during the dinner hosted by Moon in Pyeongchang.
After the opening ceremony, the North Korean delegates moved to Seoul and spent the night at the Walkerhill hotel, a riverside facility named after late U.S. Army commander Walton Walker, who’s considered a Korean War hero in the South. It was built in the 1960s under the government of late anti-communist dictator Park Chung-hee as a luxury facility for U.S. troops stationed in the South.
The North Korean delegates might attend today’s debut of the first inter-Korean Olympic team at the women’s hockey tournament in Gangneung. They might also see a performance by a visiting North Korean art troupe in Seoul on Sunday before flying back to Pyongyang.
The North has sent nearly 500 people to the Pyeongchang Games, including officials, athletes, artists and also a 230-member state-trained cheering group after the Koreas agreed to a series of conciliatory gestures for the Games.
Meanwhile, in New York, North Korea said Friday that it can’t pay nearly $184,000 US in dues to the United Nations because of United Nations sanctions that prevent the transfer of funds from Pyongyang.
North Korea’s UN Mission said sanctions imposed by the Security Council in early August on the Foreign Trade Bank of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is in charge of international transactions, made payment impossible.
The mission said Ambassador Ja Song Nam met Undersecretary-General for Management Jan Beagle Friday afternoon to request the opening of “banking channels” to make the DPRK’s required $183,458 payment for 2018 for the UN’s regular operations and separate budgets for peacekeeping and international tribunals.
Ice dance stars Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir took turns carrying the Canadian flag at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on Friday, hours after their teammates got Canada off to a solid start in the team figure skating competition.
Canada overcame some early stumbles from star Patrick Chan in the men’s skate and led the standings after the first day of competition of the team event. It marked the start of a solid day for Canadian athletes, as freestyle skiers Mikael Kingsbury and Andi Naude impressed in moguls qualifying and the mixed curling team of John Morris and Kaitlyn Lawes improved to 3-1 with a pair of wins.
The figure skating meet kicked off several hours before the opening ceremony, and the early morning start had Chan a bit rattled.
Chan had a shaky skate to open Canada’s gold-medal quest in the team event. But he wasn’t the only one.
Skating to Dust in the Wind by Kansas, the three-time world champion from Toronto fell on both his quadruple toe loop and triple Axel to score 81.66, putting him in third in the men’s short program.
Shoma Uno was the only skater to lay down anything resembling a clean program, scoring 103.25 to put Japan in the lead. Alexei Bychenko of Israel sat second with 88.49. American phenom Nathan Chen, considered a favourite for gold in the individual event, fell once and popped a quad jump to score 80.61.
Two-time world pairs champs Meagan Duhamel of Lively, Ont., and Eric Radford of Balmertown, Ont., had a better day than Chan, finishing second with a score of 76.57, behind Russians Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov, who recorded 80.92. Germans Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot were third with 75.36.
After the first two events of the team competition, Canada was atop the standings with 17 points, three ahead of the Americans. Japan was third with 13.
Figure skating traditionally runs well into the night at the Olympics, but North American prime time television demands has it finished by the early afternoon in South Korea, throwing skaters’ schedules topsy-turvy.
Virtue and Moir, who skate the ice dance portion of the team event Sunday, were all smiles as they led Canada’s red-clad contingent into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium, one of 92 nations to enter the chilly 35,000-seat facility on a blustery night where temperatures dipped to -8 C with the wind chill.
Virtue, of London, Ont., took the first turn with the Maple Leaf before passing it to Moir, of Ilderton, Ont., halfway through their tour of the venue.
The pair won ice dance gold at the 2010 Games before capturing silver in 2014, and are a good bet to reach the podium again in South Korea.
Meanwhile, Kingsbury is off to a promising start in men’s moguls. The skier from Deux-Montagnes. Que., took top spot in men’s qualifying with 86.07 points on the Phoenix Park course. Andi Naude, of Penticton, was second on the women’s side with 79.60 points.
Montreal’s Justine DufourLapointe, a gold medallist in 2014, was fourth. Her sister Chloe, who won silver four years ago, was 13th in qualifying. With only the top 10 advancing to the final from Friday’s qualifying, Chloe DufourLapointe will need to deliver in another qualifying run on Sunday.
Elsewhere at Phoenix Park, Canadian snowboarder Laurie Blouin was carried off the course on a stretcher after a nasty training fall. The reigning world champion in slopestyle fell heavily when her board got stuck in a crack after she landed a double jump. Blouin was taken to hospital for evaluation as a precaution.
Morris and Lawes improved to 3-1 in mixed curling with a 10-4 win over China’s Rui Wang and Dexin Ba and an 8-2 rout over Tomi Rantamaeki and Oona Kauste of Finland.