Can Lee Hee-ho, the widow of former President Kim Dae-jung, create a breakthrough in the icy relations between Seoul and Pyongyang? That is the question being asked by political watchers as Lee prepares to visit North Korea.
Lee, who serves as the head of the Kim Dae Jung Peace Center, met with President Park Geun-hye at the Blue House on Oct. 28, two days after she had sent a wreath on the memorial day for Park’s father, President Park Chung-hee. During the meeting, Lee said that she would like Park’s permission to visit North Korea to deliver caps and mufflers. The Unification Ministry on Thursday gave the Kim Dae Jung Peace Center the green light to contact North Korean authorities to arrange Lee’s visit.
If Lee, 92, does travel to Pyongyang, it would be the first visit by a prominent South Korean figure to the North since the three top-ranking Pyongyang officials visited Incheon earlier last month with an offer of a second round of high-level talks.
Those talks have not happened. Seoul’s Oct. 30 date for the high-level meeting came and went, with Pyongyang demanding an end to the floating of balloons carrying anti-North Korean leaflets before the two sides can sit down for talks, and Seoul insisting that it cannot violate civic groups’ freedom of expression.
Those who propose that Lee be sent as a special envoy, rather than in her private capacity to deliver humanitarian assistance, point to Lee’s symbolic significance as the spouse of Kim Dae-jung, who held the first South-North summit in 2000.
Lee is the only person in South Korea to have met with both the late Kim Jong-il ― she accompanied her husband to Pyongyang in 2000 for the summit ― and the current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, whom she met in 2011 when she attended Kim Jong-il’s wake in Pyongyang. Some political observers suggest that the Lee-Kim meeting could take place around Dec. 17, the third anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death.
The delivery of caps and mufflers is in line with the infant and young children’s assistance program outlined by Park in her Dresden declaration earlier this year. The Kim Dae Jung Peace Center is also said to be preparing to deliver nutritional supplements for infants and young children.
If Lee does indeed meet Kim, it could be an opportunity to revive the momentum for high-level talks, but little more. Given how both Pyongyang and Seoul have dug in their heels regarding the floating of balloons, it is unlikely that a special envoy would be able to achieve much in the way of a breakthrough.
Sending Lee as a special envoy would imbue too much political significance to what is supposed to be a trip to deliver humanitarian assistance. A social activist and a well-known women’s rights campaigner even before her marriage to Kim Dae-jung, Lee enjoys credibility as an advocate for humanitarian assistance.
Lee should be allowed to carry out her humanitarian activities without being burdened with a political mission. Warm caps and mufflers may be sufficient in creating goodwill among the ordinary North Koreans shivering in the bitter cold and, when goodwill is in such short supply, that may be good enough for now.
