AFRICA
South Korea Sends Delegation to North Korea to Ease Tension With Washington
South Korean President Moon Jae-in will send a delegation of special emissaries to North Korea on Monday to discuss ways to promote a dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington, the presidential blue house announced Sunday.
The delegation will be comprised of ten members, including Suh Hoon, the head of the South Korea Intelligence Service, and will be led by Mr. Moon’s adviser on national security Chung Eui-Yong.
After this two-day visit to North Korea, South Korean special emissaries will fly to the United States to report on their talks in Pyongyang.
Last month, a North Korean delegation visited the South on the occasion of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. This diplomatic mission was sent after a year of rising tensions between the Koreas over the North’s increasing power in the nuclear field.
Saturday, during a dinner with reporters on Saturday, US President Donald Trump gave the impression that he wanted to meet the leaders of North Korea but that they first had to “denuke.”
Tensions on the peninsula peaked in 2017. The North fired missiles capable of reaching the continental United States and concluded its most powerful nuclear test to date while US President Donald Trump and Mr. Kim exchanged personal insults and threats.
The South Korean president’s attempts to ensure that the North Korean and US envoys had the opportunity to talk to each other on the sidelines of the Games were not enough to remedy the situation.
The announcements of new sanctions by the Trump administration shows the lack of enthusiasm of the US government for such an exchange. Washington unveiled a new ban on trading with more than fifty shipping companies that would help North Korea bypass UN sanctions.
Twenty-seven companies and twenty-eight ships registered in North Korea, China, Singapore or the Marshall Islands and Panama are targeted by what Donald Trump has described as “the heaviest sanctions ever imposed against a country.”
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