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In a recent meeting with a delegation from the World Council of Churches (WCC) visiting Pyongyang, North Korean president Kim Yong-nam said a significant impetus to solving the nuclear weapons stand-off in the region would be for North Korea and the U.S. to meet “face-to-face with each other”.
Kim, the president of the Presidium of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Supreme People's Assembly, said the region needs to be denuclearized. He alluded to a certain unfairness within the Six Party Talks, saying that the members of the talks are “all nuclear powers or enjoy nuclear protection by the United States” with the sole exception of North Korea.
He also said that the armistice agreement which effectively ended the Korean War but did not bring peace to the region “should be replaced with a peace agreement between North Korea and the United States”.
Kim's comments were made during his 70-minute meeting with the WCC general secretary, the Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, on Monday afternoon 19 October in Pyongyang.
Kim is one of the three principal leaders of North Korea along with Kim Jong-il, the Supreme Leader, and Kim Yong-il, the Premier. Kim Yong-nam is often described as the de facto leader since he often represents the country on state visits around the world and in the signing of treaties on behalf of the DPRK.
Kobia and the WCC delegation were in North Korea at the invitation of the Korean Christian Federation (KCF) visiting churches and holding discussions with North Korean church leaders in advance of a three-day consultation on the church and Korean reunification being held in Hong Kong, 21 to 23 October.
Four North Korean church leaders were planning to attend the consultation. There will also be nearly 50 South Korean church leaders and another 80 church leaders from a dozen other countries around the world, including delegations from the U.S., Canada, China, Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Russia.
The WCC has been instrumental in bringing representatives of the two Korean church families together for more than 25 years in what is called the Tozanso Process, in which WCC member churches have joined Korean Christians to explore efforts at reunification of the peninsula.
During his meeting with Kobia, Kim talked about how the North Korean government has assisted over the years in rebuilding churches that were destroyed during the Korean War and the bombing of Pyongyang by the U.S.
He invited the WCC to continue its relationship with the Korean Christian Federation through ongoing visits to the country.
Commenting further on the nuclear weapons situation of North Korea, Kim said the solution was to denuclearize the entire region. Creating a nuclear free Korean peninsula was “one of the last instructions from the Great Leader”, former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, who is called the “eternal leader” of North Korea and died in 1994.
Kobia said the position of the WCC is that “those who have nuclear weapons should get rid of them and those wanting them should no longer seek them”.
Kim pointed out that all of the other members of the Six Party Talks were either nuclear powers (China, Russia and the U.S.) or nations “under the nuclear protection policy of the U.S.” (Japan and South Korea).
Kobia told Kim that from the perspective of the WCC and its member churches, “we as Christians will continue to work for peace, as Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace and a peacemaker in the world”, and that all in the WCC “look forward to the day when the Koreas will be reunified and families will be reunited.”
Others present at the meeting were the Rev. Kang Yong Sop, chairman of the KCF, and the Rev. Ri Rong Ji, director of KCF, as well as WCC delegation members Mathews George Chunakara, Christina Papazoglou, Mark Beach and Peter Williams.
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