Delegations to Pyongyang Increasing – South Korean Daily

Text of report entitled: “World heavyweights in great march on Pyongyang”, published in English by South Korean newspaper Choson Ilbo website on 30 August

Delegations from South Korea and abroad are making a beeline to the world’s most reclusive country, with some 20 groups visiting Pyongyang in August alone. They have been on the increase ever since North Korea announced its return to six-party talks on its nuclear programme in July.

Among high-ranking visitors, Chinese chief negotiator at the six- party talks Wu Dawei, Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon and Zambian Vice President Lupando Mwape are either in Pyongyang or have just left.

There has been a Chinese trade delegation, a Russian delegation led by Konstantin Pulikovsky, the presidential plenipotentiary in Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District and Washington Times Corporation president Joo Dong-mun. Other notables include New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger (July) and CNN founder Ted Turner (August).

South Korean visitors are passing each other in Pyongyang Airport’s creaky revolving doors. A Democratic Labour Party delegation visited Pyongyang on 23-27 August, and MBC president Choi Moon-soon visited on Saturday. With crooner Jo Yong-pil’s visit just over, the New Seoul Opera will perform “Ah Koguryo Koguryo” in Pyongyang next month.

“Inter-Korean exchanges are so active you could say it’s a second June 15 Joint Declaration,” says a Unification Ministry official, referring to the 2000 agreement that started a thaw between the two Koreas. As of the end of July, 42,186 South Korean had visited the North, excluding those on Kumgang Mountain tour packages. The total is already 1.6 times the number that visited during the whole of last year (26,213).