A giant Christmas tree was lit up near the tense border with North Korea on Saturday, a move that may anger the communist country.
It had been an annual ritual for South Korea to light a Christmas tree on top of a hill called Aegibong near the western sector of the inter-Korean border before it was suspended in 2003 as the then liberal South Korean government sought reconciliation with North Korea.
South Korea resumed the ritual in 2010 after the North’s deadly artillery attack on one of its border islands in the Yellow Sea, but it dropped the plan last year following the death of the North’s then-leader Kim Jong-il on Dec. 17.
For this year’s Christmas, the South’s defense ministry allowed a local church to illuminate the 30-meter-high Christmas tree.
About 100 Christians attended the lighting ceremony, and the Marine Corps stayed on high alert for possible border unrest, according to ministry officials.
Earlier in the day, the North’s Korean Central News Agency rapped the lighting event, warning that it could create new military conflicts.
“The event is not a religious activity, but an outright psychological warfare against the DPRK,” the news agency said a report, monitored in Seoul.
The DPRK, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is North Korea’s official name. (Yonhap News)
