PYONGYANG, North Korea — Former President Jimmy Carter and other past world leaders were in Pyongyang on Tuesday hoping to meet with North Korea’s leader as part of a mission to discuss dangerous food shortages and stalled nuclear disarmament talks.
Carter arrived today with former Finnish P
resident Martti Ahtisaari, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland and former Irish President Mary Robinson for the three-day visit to North Korea, according to Associated Press Television News in Pyongyang.
The former leaders were not told ahead of their trip who they would meet with, but said they hoped to see North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his son and heir apparent Kim Jong Un.
The mission comes as diplomats struggle to find a way to restart talks meant to persuade the North to abandon its atomic weapons ambitions.
Dismal ties between North and South Korea, which have ruined efforts to restart the nuclear talks, will also likely be on the agenda. Animosity has soared between the neighbors since the North allegedly torpedoed a South Korean warship in March 2010. Pyongyang shelled a South Korean island in November, killing two civilians and two marines.
South Korea is demanding an apology for both incidents before allowing deeper talks, but North Korea says it wasn’t responsible for the sinking of the warship.
Before flying from Beijing to Pyongyang, Carter told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that he didn’t intend to raise the case of Korean-American Jun Young Su, who is being held in North Korea, reportedly on charges of carrying out missionary activity.
The U.S. State Department said last month that Carter would not be carrying any official messages.
In 1994, Carter traveled to North Korea during another period of high tension over the North’s nuclear program. He met with then-leader Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il’s father and the North’s founder, and helped broker a U.S.-North Korea nuclear deal.
He last visited North Korea in August to secure the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing into the North from China. Carter did not meet with Kim then because the leader was on a rare visit to China, his nation’s biggest ally and aid provider.
Carter’s trip comes amid efforts on several fronts to reinvigorate stalled six-nation nuclear negotiations. China’s top nuclear envoy was due today in Seoul for talks, while a South Korean delegation was to meet with U.S. diplomats in Washington.
North Korea’s top nuclear envoy reportedly traveled to Beijing earlier this month to discuss restarting the talks, which involve two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
The former leaders also plan to discuss food shortages that could threaten many North Koreans.
Years of poor harvests, a lack of investment in agriculture and political isolation have left the North severely vulnerable to starvation, with the average amount of food distributed by the government to each person dropping this year from 1,400 calories per day to just 700, according the U.N.’s World Food Program.
Former Irish President Robinson said a recent United Nations study based on conditions throughout North Korea classified 3.5 million out of the country’s 24 million people as “very vulnerable” to starvation and that conditions stood to worsen with cuts in food distribution.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
