Koreas exchange tangerines, mushrooms

SEOUL: South Korea has airlifted thousands of boxes of tangerines to North Korea in return for the North’s large shipments of pine mushrooms in September, Seoul officials said yesterday.

South Korea sent 200 tonnes of tangerines to North Korea yesterday afternoon. Seoul’s Defence Ministry said military planes flew to Pyongyang twice on Sunday to deliver the fruits and were doing the same yesterday.

After September’s inter-Korean summit talks in Pyongyang, North Korea gave South Korea 2 tonnes of pine mushrooms as a goodwill gesture.

The tangerine airlifting is a sign that the two Koreas are pushing ahead with efforts to improve ties despite a stalemated global diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear programme. According to Seoul and Washington officials, North Korea recently postponed high-level talks with the United States meant to discuss achieving North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and setting up a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

After a provocative run of its nuclear and missile tests last year, North Korea entered talks with the United States and South Korea this year saying it’s willing to deal away its advancing weapons arsenal. The North has since taken measures like dismantling its nuclear testing site and parts of its rocket-engine testing facility, but US officials want the country to take more significant and irreversible steps toward denuclearisation.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in was behind US-North Korea diplomacy. Mr Moon has met Mr Kim three times this year.

Mr Moon’s Unification Ministry said yesterday it had approved a visit by seven North Koreans to attend an academic forum in South Korea later this week. The forum is about regional issues including Japan’s wartime mobilisation of labourers.

Seoul said on Saturday the two Koreas finished withdrawing troops and firearms from some of their frontline guard posts as part of their agreements to lower military tensions between the countries.