By Joint Press Corps & Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter

PYONGYANG _ South Korean officials visiting the North for a joint festival to celebrate the inter-Korean summit in June 2000 officially invited a North Korean delegation to attend the Aug. 15 joint event in Seoul to mark the Liberation Day.
``We hope the 60th anniversary of the liberation would be jointly celebrated by the South and the North,’’ Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said at a meeting with North Korean officials. ``We courteously invite the North’s delegation and other people to Seoul.’’

Chung is leading the South’s 40-member government delegation to the largely civilian event to be held here in Pyongyang from June 14-17 with hundreds of people from both the sides attending.

On the second day of the four-day festivities, North Korea sought to emphasize cooperation with the South while excluding outside powers, a strategy the communist state has often used to avert international pressure on it to address a lot of problems, including its nuclear drive.

The second day of the festival began with a ceremony, during which civilian leaders from the two sides pledged to cooperate to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula, divided for over 50 years since the Korean War.

``We should not sit idle and beg for peace. Rather we should trust our nation and safeguard peace with our unified power,’’ Ahn Kyong-ho, chief of the North’s civilian delegate, said in a speech while stressing the need to increase bilateral cooperation between the two sides.



Paik Nak-cheong, South Korea’s top civilian representative to joint anniversary events celebrating the fifth anniversary of the inter-Korean summit in 2000, speaks during a unification conference at the April 25 Culture Hall in Pyongyang, Wednesday.

/Joint Press Corps


Ahn’s South Korean counterpart, Paik Nak-cheong, a professor emeritus at Seoul National University, also called for more efforts to ease military tension and boost the atmosphere of peace on the peninsula.

Neither Ahn nor Paik avoided mentioning the international standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. It was not clear whether the government delegates led by Chung raised the issue at the meetings with their Northern counterparts. The two sides instead issued a five-point joint declaration, including a call for unity to remove the threat of nuclear war and keep peace on the peninsula.

But, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon said during a press briefing in Seoul that the South Korean delegation would use this week’s festival as an opportunity to urge the North to make the strategic decision of giving up its nuclear ambition in the six-party talks.

The joint celebration this week comes at a critical time when South Korea’s President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush offered a conciliatory gesture to the North in their summit last Friday and the North has been hinting at its possible return to the bargaining table.

Seoul has promised to offer an ``important proposal’’ if Pyongyang comes back to the six-party talks and Roh and Bush also hinted at a more positive approach in future negotiations, which could lead to ``more normal relations’’ between the U.S. and the North.

Chung and his entourage will have meetings with high-profile North Korean officials, including the No. 2 leader Kim Yong-nam, today. It is not clear whether Chung would be able to meet the top North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr