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Wednesday 5 August 2015 - 06:29

South Korea’s former first lady due in North in rare visit

Story Code : 478017
Former South Korean first lady Lee Hee-ho
Former South Korean first lady Lee Hee-ho
Lee Hee-ho, the widow of late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung will begin the three-day trip on Wednesday, authorities said on Tuesday.
 
Seoul has repeatedly stressed that Lee’s visit has no official characteristics of any kind.
 
“Lee’s trip is a significant event but we are not planning to send any official messages through her,” according to Park Soo-Jin, a spokeswoman for the South Korean Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border affairs between the two neighbors.
 
Lee will be accompanied by an 18-member entourage, including former Seoul officials and humanitarian workers, but no sitting government official.
 
Her upcoming visit to North Korea is humanitarian in nature, according to reports. The 93-year-old is planning to tour a children’s hospital, a maternity home and an orphanage in North’s capital of Pyongyang.
 
It is still not clear whether she will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The two have already met once – when Lee visited to pay her respects following the death of Kim’s father in December 2011.
 
The visit comes just ahead of the 70th anniversary of the August 15, 1945 liberation of the pre-division Korean Peninsula from Japanese colonial rule.
 
At the start of the year, there had been hopes that the anniversary could serve as an icebreaker for a resumption of dialogue, but the two sides have been unable to agree on any joint celebratory event.
 
Lee’s late husband was best known for his so-called “sunshine policy” of engagement with the North, which led to a historic summit with Kim’s father in 2000.
 
The policy helped the former South Korean president win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. However, the policy was largely abandoned when a conservative administration took power in Seoul in 2008 and cross-border relations soured.
 
The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military rhetoric since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul technically remain at war with one another.
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