S. Koreans may visit Pyongyang next week

By Yi Whan-woo

A group of South Korean advocates on cross-border reconciliation plan to visit Pyongyang, June 20, to discuss ways to bolster private sector exchanges in line with the joint declaration signed at the first inter-Korean summit on June 15, 2000.

The South Korean Committee on the June 15 Joint Declaration said Friday its counterpart in the North invited its representatives to join a conference in Pyongyang.

The conference will be held from June 20 to 23.

It will focus on resuming cross-border cooperation on the civil level as pledged by two former leaders _ President Kim Dae-jung and the North's Kim Jong-il _ in their June 15 Joint Declaration.

The two sides last celebrated the June 15 Joint Declaration in 2008.

"We received the letter of invitation from the North, Monday, and filed a request for the Pyongyang trip with the Ministry of Unification, Wednesday," committee chairman Lee Chang-bok said. "We're waiting for the government's approval."

The committee representatives include politicians, religious leaders, labor activists, farmers, women's rights activists and university students.

They will fly to Shenyang, China, and move to Pyongyang if the unification ministry approves their trip.

Among the possible topics to be discussed are celebrations for the 73rd anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from Japanese colonial rule on Aug. 15, 1945, and the 11th anniversary of the second inter-Korean summit in October 2007.

The two sides may also consult each other on co-hosting a football match and joining hands next year to mark the anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919.

The June 15 Joint Declaration calls for extensive civilian cooperation in various sectors, as part of efforts to build permanent peace and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

It has served as the groundwork for two subsequent declarations announced in the second inter-Korean summit between Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il in October 2007 and the third between President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un in April 2018.

The committee members' possible Pyongyang trip comes amid deepening detente on the Korean Peninsula following Kim Jong-un's June 12 summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore.

The committee had sought to jointly prepare for the anniversary of the June 15 Joint Declaration with its North Korean counterpart right after the April 2018 summit.

But it was disrupted by a diplomatic row between Pyongyang and Washington in their preparations for the Singapore summit.