SKorean delegation arrives in Pyongyang

SEOUL: The most senior South Koreans to travel North for more than a decade arrived in Pyongyang on Monday on a mission to push for talks between the nuclear-armed regime and the United States.

An intense rapprochement saw athletes from both sides of the divided peninsula march together at the South’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last month, with the North’s leader Kim Jong Un sending his sister as a special envoy to the event.

visit to the South by a member of the North’s ruling dynasty since the end of the Korean War, and her appearance at the Games’ opening ceremony made global headlines.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has sought to use the Pyeongchang Games to open dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang in the hopes of easing a nuclear standoff that has heightened fears over global security.

Kim Yo Jong invited him to a summit in Pyongyang on her brother’s behalf, but Moon did not immediately accept, saying that the right conditions were

“We plan to hold in-depth discussions for ways to continue not only inter-Korean talks but dialogue between North Korea and the international community including the United States,” said national security advisor Chung Eui-yong, who is leading the delegation.

“We will deliver President Moon’s Korean peninsula and to create sincere and lasting peace,” Chung told reporters before his departure.

Chung is one of five senior on Monday.

South Korean visit to the North since December 2007, when Seoul’s then intelligence chief traveled to Pyongyang.

Conservative Lee Myung- bak was elected the South’s president the following day, and took a markedly harder line on relations with the North.

Washington connection

Monday’s delegation includes spy chief Suh Hoon, who is a veteran in dealings with the North. He is known to have been deeply involved in negotiations to arrange two previous inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency also announced their impending visit in a one-paragraph dispatch.

- cials—will return to Seoul on Tuesday.

Other members include Suh’s deputy at the National Intelligence Service as well as Chun Hae-sung, the vice minister of Seoul’s uni cross-border affairs.

on Wednesday to explain the result of the two- day trip to officials in Washington, according to the

sanctions, the isolated and impoverished North staged its most powerful nuclear test and of them capable of reaching the US mainland.