By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
The elderly widow of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung returned from North Korea with a call for reconciliation Saturday, despite apparently failing to secure an audience with the reclusive state’s leader Kim Jong-un during her four-day visit.
“We should not pass on the pain of the two Koreas’ division to our next generation,” 93-year-old Lee Hee-ho told journalists after landing back in Seoul.
Seoul-Pyongyang ties are as fraught with tension as ever despite decades passing since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
August 15 will mark exactly 70 years since the peninsula was liberated from Japan – but freedom came with the price of division.
Kim Dae-jung has come as close as anyone to warming inter-Korean ties – his ‘sunshine policy’ earned him a Nobel Peace Prize along with a summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000.
So close yet so far as the North has continued to develop nuclear weapons in breach of United Nations resolutions.
While sources cited by local news agency Yonhap confirmed that there was no rendezvous between Kim’s widow and the North’s present leader, the former first lady explained more about why she had made the trip – a rarity as South Korean citizens need special permission to travel to the isolated country.
“I visited North Korea with a sense of duty, believing that I should contribute to helping inherit the spirit of June 15,” Lee said in reference to a joint declaration of cooperation reached at the 2000 inter-Korean summit.
An encounter with the son of Kim Jong-il 15 years on from those breakthrough talks would have been hugely symbolic.
In fact, Lee did meet the young leader when she paid her respects to his deceased father following his death in 2011 – Kim Jong-un also personally invited her to the North last year before relations with Seoul turned particularly sour.
Instead of representing a direct opportunity to influence Pyongyang’s revered head of state, Lee’s visit included a personal glance at North Korea’s health and welfare system and greetings with children there.
But her presence did not go unnoticed – the North’s state-controlled Uriminzokkiri website praised the elderly visitor’s commitment to her late husband’s efforts “despite the South Korean government’s uncooperative attitude.”
