‘NKorea participation will aid peace’

Troops, cameras, radiation: China preps for crisis

SEOUL, Jan 21, (Agencies): Seoul welcomed confirmation by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that 22 North Korean athletes would compete in next month’s Winter Olympics, saying on Sunday it would aid peace and the easing of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

In the first of a series of preparatory visits, North Korean music and arts officials arrived in South Korea on Sunday to inspect sites for performances during the Olympics.

“North Korea’s participation in the Olympics will be a catalyst for building peace and easing tensions on the Korean peninsula,” said South Korea’s presidential Blue House in a statement released on Sunday.

The visit to the South marks the first by North Koreans since South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office in May last year and sought to re-engage with the North.

“President Moon has previously stressed that the Pyeongchang Olympics should be an important turning point in solving North Korea’s missile issues,” the Blue House statement said.

The seven-member North Korean delegation, led by musician Hyon Songwol, will check venues for performances by a 140-strong art troupe at the Olympics.

The officials are scheduled to spend two days inspecting art centres in Seoul and Gangneung city, which will also host several of the Olympic events.

South Korean broadcaster YTN reported the delegation had arrived in Seoul early Sunday under a heavy police presence, then boarded a train to Gangwon province, where the Olympics will be held from Feb 9-25.

Pyongyang said on Sunday it also plans to send another team of sports officials to inspect Olympic venues and accommodations from Jan 25-27, South Korea’s unification ministry said.

In a diplomatic breakthrough after a year of escalating tension over the North’s nuclear and missile programme, the IOC

their fishing vessel in the waters between the southern Philippines and Malaysia in November 2016, a police statement said.

The two were reportedly turned over by a “concerned citizen” late Thursday to a former governor on the southern island of Jolo, a longtime haunt of the Abu Sayyaf extremist group, some of whose announced on Saturday that North Korea will send 22 athletes to the Winter Games and compete in three sports and five disciplines.

China has ramped up security along its border with North Korea, installing new surveillance cameras, deploying extra security forces and operating radiation detectors as it braces for a potential crisis.

Bellicose rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang has raised fears in China of a conflict that could send millions of North Korean refugees across the 1,420-kilometre (880-mile) border, and of nuclear fallout that could hit Chinese towns.

While authorities have been coy about preparations, residents have seen an increase in patrols along the frontier.

Radiation monitors are running in border towns, and locals say interactions with North Koreans have been discouraged.

Banner

A red banner tacked to a border fence in Dandong — a major trading hub separated from North Korea by the Yalu River — has a Cold War-like message to residents:

“Citizens or organisations who see spying activities must immediately report them to national security organs.”

Outside Dandong, new checkpoints dot the road running along the Yalu River. Locals say they were installed in October.

“Before, the North Koreans came to our side to fish. Now they don’t dare,” said Zhang Fuquan at his fish farm on the Chinese side of the Yalu River. “The army patrols and watches.” On the opposite bank, North Korean soldiers peered out from turquoise watchtowers and at least one warplane surveilled the territory from above.

Experts said the aircraft, spotted by an AFP reporter, was a Stalin-era Ilyushin Il28 light bomber or a Chinese copy.

“The North Koreans very likely are flying a patrol along the Yalu,” said Rick Fisher, a fellow at the International Assessment

members have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, the statement added.

The ex-governor called the police who picked up the two. Officials would not say if ransom, a frequent motive for such abductions, was paid in this case.

The Abu Sayyaf is a loose network of militants formed in and Strategy Center, a USbased think-tank.

“They want to see what they can on the Chinese side” and deliberately “raise Beijing’s alarm.”

Relations between China and North Korea have deteriorated as Beijing has backed a series of UN sanctions to punish its secretive ally over its repeated missile and nuclear tests.

In a previously unthinkable meeting, top US diplomats and military officials told their Chinese counterparts last year about US plans to send troops to North Korea and secure its nuclear weapons in case the regime fell.

“The China-North Korea relationship has some problems at present,” said Yang Xiyu, a former Chinese negotiator on Pyongyang’s nuclear issue.

“It has brought about the current difficult situation in the relationship.”

At the massive Sup’ung hydroelectric dam, which provides power to both China and North Korea, surveillance cameras monitor the Yalu River.

“The border is tightly controlled now,” said 75-year-old Yin Guoxie, retired from a lifetime of work at the dam.

Yin said regular North Koreans are not allowed to have boats, minimising the number who try to cross.

“If they do come over here, we’ll catch them and send them back,” he added.

Further north in Longjing, where the Tumen River freezes over in the winter, villages have established border protection units and cadres have taught selfdefence to residents.

The local propaganda department said last year that hundreds of cameras were being installed to build a “second generation border surveillance system”.

The measures are slashing the number of North Korean defectors who reach Seoul via a land route through China to Southeast Asia.

Fewer than 100 North Koreans a month reached the South last year — the lowest number in 15 years — according to Seoul’s unification ministry.

the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, and has earned millions of dollars from banditry and kidnappings-for-ransom, often targetting foreigners. The group is based in the strife-torn southern islands like Jolo but its members have sometimes crossed the southern maritime borders to carry out

attacks in Malaysia. (AFP)

Troops, militants clash:

Philippine troops clashed briefly with pro-Islamic State militants in the volatile south on Saturday, the army said, in their first engagement since the government retook Marawi city in the country’s biggest battle since World War Two.

Army spokesman Major Ronald Suscano said six soldiers were wounded in the encounter.

The clash erupted after government forces encountered about 10 members of the Maute group in a district in Lanao del Sur, a stronghold of the rebel group, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, Suscano said in a statement.

The military in October declared victory over the Maute group, which seized control in the southern city of Marawi on May 23, after killing the remaining militants, including a few foreign fighters. More than 1,100 people, including 165 soldiers, died in the five-month conflict.

The siege of Marawi, the country’s biggest security crisis in years, has stoked wider concerns that Islamic State loyalists have learned how to thrive in impoverished Muslim areas of the island of Mindanao and use its jungles and mountains as staging posts to launch attacks. (RTRS)