S. Korean team arrives in Pyongyang to celebrate joint university

SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean delegation arrived in Pyongyang on
Tuesday to attend a ceremony celebrating the completion of a science university
jointly built with donations from the South, the North's media said.
A day earlier, the South Korean government gave permission for the 20-member
delegation -- including an aide to President Lee Myung-bak and people mostly from
a religious foundation -- to attend the ceremony, which is set for Wednesday.
The Pyongyang University of Science and Technology was built with donations
collected over the years from the South to help train young North Koreans with
advanced technology and boost inter-Korean reconciliation. But it is still
unclear when the school will open, with South Korea withholding faculty exchanges
and shipments of computers amid the diplomatic stalemate over the North's nuclear
drive.
The delegation "arrived in Pyongyang by plane today to participate in the
completion ceremony of the first-stage buildings" of the university, the Korean
Central Broadcasting Station, a state-run radio network, said in a one-sentence
report.
Construction started in 2002 on 1 million square meters in the North Korean
capital. The campus currently has school headquarters, lecture halls, a dormitory
and a research and development center.
The visiting team was led by Kim Jin-kyung, president of the Yanbian University
of Science and Technology in the Korean autonomous prefecture of Yanbian,
northeastern China. Kim has been designated as president of the university.
Park Chan-mo, a special science and technology advisor to Lee, is also on the
team, as well as Kwak Seon-hee, head of the Seoul-based Northeast Asia Foundation
for Education and Culture, the Christian group that has been the main organizer
of funding for the Pyongyang university.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)