Pyongyang media swiftly report condolence delegation's activity

SEOUL, Aug. 21 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's state media carried a series of
unusually swift reports Friday on the country's delegation visiting South Korea
"under authorization" of its supreme leader Kim Jong-il.

Pyongyang's official news agency, the (North) Korean Central News Agency (KCNA),
said a wreath sent by Kim for late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was
"courteously placed by the special envoy group" at the public mourning center at
the National Assembly.
"The group courteously conveyed the message of condolences and words of profound
consolation sent by Kim Jong-il to the bereaved family of the deceased," it
added.
Hours earlier, the KCNA reported that the delegation, led by a Workers' Party
Central Committee secretary, left for Seoul on a chartered plane shortly after
its departure.
Such swift reports were extraordinary for the secretive communist country's
tightly contolled media, which usually carries belated reports on leader Kim
Jong-il's official activities and visits by high-profile foreign figures.
The North's six-member team plans to stay overnight here, spawning speculation
that the two Koreas may have a high-level meeting on easing tensions on the
Korean Peninsula that have been running high since the launch of the conservative
Lee Myung-bak administration early last year.
It is the first time for North Korean officials to visit South Korea in nearly
two years.
Kim Ki-nam, head of the delegation, is arguably one of the closest aides to
leader Kim Jong-il.
He is called a "wizard with propaganda." He has been overseeing the communist
nation's propaganda campaign for its political system for decades.
The secretary is known to have created a number of national slogans and written
many of the leader Kim's speeches and other messages.
He made his previous trip to the South in 2005 to attend a joint event by the two
Koreas to celebrate liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule that ended
Aug. 15, 1945.
At the time, he also made a surprise trip to the National Cemetery in Seoul,
where the remains of tens of thousands of South Korean patriots, mostly soldiers
killed during the war, are buried, breaking a decades-long taboo on the divided
peninsula.
Kim Yang-gon, head of the party's unification front department, is also included
in the delegation.
Kim is in charge of Pyongyang's policy on Seoul and inter-Korean economic
cooperation projects, and is known as a key diplomatic policy advisor to the
North's leader. He was a key player in arranging the second inter-Korean summit
in October 2007, attending the meeting between then President Roh Moo-hyun and
Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and following up a month later by meeting again with
Roh.
lcd@yna.co.kr
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