North Korean delegation pays respect in Seoul

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – A high-level North Korean delegation arrived in Seoul on Friday to pay respects to late former President Kim Dae-jung, a rare visit that raised hopes of improved relations between the tense neighbors.

A plane carrying the six-member delegation landed Friday afternoon, Gimpo airport official Park Hyun-il told The Associated Press. He did not provide further details.

The convoy is to head straight for the National Assembly, where Kim's body will lie in state until his funeral Sunday. Kim, 85, died Tuesday.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said the delegation is headed by senior Workers' Party official Kim Ki Nam and includes the country's spy chief, Kim Yang Gon.

It was not immediately clear whether the North Koreans would hold talks with South Korean officials before returning home Saturday.

Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters no other itinerary for the North Koreans had been set.

However, the trip — the first by North Korean officials to the South in nearly two years — could provide a valuable opportunity for contact between officials from the two Koreas, which technically remain at war.

Ties have been tense since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative, took office last year, abandoning the previous administration's "Sunshine Policy" of reaching out to the communist North with aid.

Kim Dae-jung, a longtime defender of democracy and champion of reconciliation on the Korean peninsula, was the architect of the Sunshine Policy.

After holding a historic summit in 2000 with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, South Korea's Kim won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts at engaging the North after decades of inter-Korean tensions.

Kim Jong Il sent a condolence message to Kim's family on Wednesday. North Korean media announced the next day that he approved sending a delegation to Seoul to visit the mourning site.

North Korea has only dispatched a condolence delegation only once before — a one-day trip in 2001 during the mourning period for Chung Ju-yung, the founder of South Korea's Hyundai Group, which funded the first inter-Korean joint projects.