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지나쌤

Ex-first lady Lee to visit N. Korea next year

By KH디지털2

Published : Dec. 1, 2014 - 14:52

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The widow of former South Korean President and 2000 Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung plans to visit North Korea next May or June when the weather is milder and more favorable to her health, her nonprofit organization said Monday.

Lee Hee-ho, 92, expressed her wish to travel to North Korea for humanitarian purposes when she met with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in late October.
  
Pyongyang accepted the request last month.
  
"(Lee) wished to visit the North this year, but at the earnest advice of her doctors, she postponed the visit to next year," the Kim Dae Jung Peace Center said in a news release.
  
"Doctors advised her that it would be impossible to visit the North in the cold weather due to her health conditions as she was hospitalized with pneumonia in the summer and under medical treatment for more than two months."
  
Lee, who plans to visit two day-care centers in Pyongyang, would be making her second trip to the North in three years. She made her last trip to Pyongyang in 2011 to attend the funeral of then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-un. At that time, she met with the junior Kim.
  
Kim Dae-jung, who served as South Korean president from 1998-2003, is popular in North Korea for his "sunshine" policy of actively pushing cross-border exchanges and reconciliation. After holding the first inter-Korean summit with the then North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, in 2000, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the same year.
  
Lee accompanied her husband on that trip to Pyongyang.
  
She is expected to become the highest-profile South Korean figure to visit North Korea in recent months, with government-level dialogue suspended amid prolonged military tensions.
  
The North has threatened to conduct another nuclear test in anger over a U.N. resolution calling for the referral of the communist nation's leaders to the International Criminal Court for their human rights violations. (Yonhap)

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