27/04/2020
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean officials are calling for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be ill or is being isolated because of coronavirus concerns, emphasising that they have detected no unusual movements in North Korea.
At a closed door forum on Sunday, South Korea’s Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with the North, said the government has the intelligence capabilities to say with confidence that there was no indications of anything unusual.
Rumours and speculation over the North Korean leader’s health began after he made no public appearance at a key state holiday on April 15, and has since remained out of sight.
South Korea media last week reported that Kim may have undergone cardiovascular surgery or was in isolation to avoid exposure to the new coronavirus.
Unification minister Kim cast doubt on the report of surgery, arguing that the hospital mentioned did not have the capabilities for such an operation.
Still, Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the foreign and unification committee in South Korea’s National Assembly, told a gathering of experts on Monday that Kim Jong Un’s absence from the public eye suggests “he has not been working as normally”.
“There has not been any report showing he’s making policy decisions as usual since April 11, which leads us to assume that he is either sick or being isolated because of coronavirus concerns,” Yoon said.
North Korea has said it has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, but some international experts have cast doubts on that claim.
On Monday, North Korean state media once again showed no new photos of Kim nor reported on his whereabouts.
However, they did carry reports that he had sent a message of gratitude to workers building a tourist resort in Wonsan, an area where some South Korean media reports have said Kim may be staying.
“Our government position is firm,” Moon Chung-in, the top foreign policy adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said in comments to news outlets in the United States.
“Kim Jong Un is alive and well. He has been staying in the Wonsan area since April 13. No suspicious movements have so far been detected.”
Satellite images from last week showed a special train possibly belonging to Kim at Wonsan, lending weight to those reports, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project.
Though the group said it was probably the North Korean leader’s personal train, Reuters has not been able to confirm that independently, or whether he was in Wonsan.
A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry said on Monday she had nothing to confirm when asked about reports that Kim was in Wonsan.
Last week China dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signalled in terms of Kim’s health.
On Friday a South Korean source told Reuters their intelligence was that Kim Jong Un was alive and would likely make an appearance soon.
Experts have cautioned that Kim has disappeared from state media coverage before, and that gathering accurate information in North Korea is notoriously difficult.
North Korea’s state media last reported on Kim’s whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11.
Kim, believed to be 36, vanished from state media for more than a month in 2014 and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.
Source: Reuters
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12/05/2019
- South Korean violinist and North Korean singer hold rare joint performance they hope will help bring the divided Koreas closer together
South Korean violinist Won Hyung Joon performs at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Centre in Shanghai on Sunday. Photo: AP
A South Korean violinist and a North Korean singer on Sunday held a rare joint performance they hope will help bring the divided Koreas closer together via music – especially at a time of emerging tensions amid deadlocked nuclear diplomacy.
Violinist Won Hyung Joon and his North Korean soprano partner Kim Song Mi performed together at a Shanghai concert hall with a Chinese orchestra. Their concert came three days after North Korea fired two suspected short-range missiles in the second such weapons test in five days.
For both, it was their first concert with a musician from the other side of the Korean border, the world’s most heavily fortified. They met several times last year in Beijing and agreed on a joint performance to help promote peace on the Korean peninsula.
As a duet, Kim sang Antonin Dvorak’s Songs My Mother Taught Me while Won played the violin. Kim later sang Arirang, a Korean traditional folk tune beloved in both countries, while the Shanghai City Symphony Orchestra played the music.
North Korean soprano singer Kim Song Mi performs on Sunday. Photo: AP
“When I met her [Kim] for the first time, I felt like I was reuniting with an old friend who’s been on the same wavelength with me,” Won said before Sunday’s concert. “This performance shouldn’t be the end … and what’s important now is what other dreams we can have together.”
In a written interview, Kim said she “heartily wishes” that her songs would help bring back reconciliation mood.
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“I’m nervous and anxious about what inspiration the audience would have and what reaction North and South Korean compatriots would show to our joint performance,” she said.
North and South Korean musicians performing together is extremely rare as their governments do not even allow their citizens to exchange phone calls, letter and emails without special approvals. Last year saw an unusual wave of cross-border exchanges after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un abruptly entered talks on the fate of his advancing nuclear arsenal. A group of North Korean dancers and singers performed in South Korea during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, before South Korean K-pop stars flew to Pyongyang and sang in the presence of Kim and his young wife Ri Sol Ju. Both events were the first of their kind in more than 10 years.
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But such exchange programmes are now becoming a rarity again as North Korea is resuming provocative weapons tests in an apparent protest against the lack of progress in nuclear negotiations with the United States. Kim returned home empty-handed from his second summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam in February after Trump rebuffed his calls for major sanctions relief in return for his promise to conduct partial disarmament measures. No publicly known high-level meetings between Pyongyang and Washington have since been reported.
Won and Kim performed with a Chinese orchestra. Photo: AP
Sunday’s concert will not likely work as a breakthrough in the stalled nuclear diplomacy but it could still “establish an environment” that could make it easier to improve ties between the Koreas, said analyst Cho Han Bum at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.
Inspired by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded in 1999 to bring together Arab and Israeli musicians together to promote mutual understanding, Won, 42, has been pushing for the establishment of an inter-Korean orchestra for nearly a decade. He’s contacted both governments on numerous occasions, and sometimes partnered with renowned foreign maestros such as Charles Dutoit and Christoph Poppen.
But his push for a Korean orchestra performance has never been realised and was often scrapped at the last minute due to the delicate nature of ties between the Koreas, which are still technically at war because an armistice that ended the 1950-53 has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty. Incidents that helped spike his past plans included the 2015 mine blasts that maimed two South Korean soldiers, and the 2011 tensions touched off by annual South Korean-US military drills that North Korean sees as an invasion rehearsal.
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Sunday’s performance appeared less difficult to achieve as it involves just one person from each Korea, not dozens of musicians required for an orchestra, and it was happening in China, a third country and North Korea’s major ally but also South Korea’s biggest trading partner.
Jointly performing with the two Koreans is the Shanghai City Symphony Orchestra, the first and biggest amateur symphony orchestra in China. The orchestra earlier invited Won and Kim to its annual charity concert, Love In The City, Pyongyang Shanghai Seoul, before it and Won’s Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra decided to co-organise the event, according to Won.
In a response to questions last week, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said that it approved Won’s contact with Kim as part of efforts to promote diverse kinds of civilian exchanges between the rivals. The South Korean government is led by President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who espouses greater rapprochement with North Korea and has shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington ahead of two summits between Kim and Trump.
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Kim, 33, a graduate of Pyongyang’s prestigious Kim Won Gyun University of Music, is the North Korean representative in China of the Korean Association for Art Exchange. She is been living in China since 2010. Known for her classical crossover singing technique, she has also released several music albums with North Korean and well-known pieces of classical music. South Korea media reported she is the first North Korean sent abroad as a singer.
Won said when he first met Kim last spring, he felt it was easier for him to communicate with her and explain his dream than when he dealt with North Korean diplomats.
“When I talked about music with [North Korean] diplomats, I had to explain why we need music and why music is good … But I didn’t need to do that when I met Kim, and we could just get to the point,” Won said.
Kim said Won’s works had led her think again about her “love” of the Korean people and that she was willing to contribute to any efforts to promote inter-Korean cooperation.
Won said he would work together with Kim Song Mi to realise similar joint performances on bigger world stages. But he also understood how difficult it had been for him to have a concert like Sunday’s.
“If we can do music together, that means we can understand each other,” Won said. “People are talking about unification, an inter-Korean railway, a peace treaty and the end of war declaration. But can we really do those while failing to do an easy thing like doing music together?”
Source: SCMP
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
South Korean officials call for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim is ill
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean officials are calling for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be ill or is being isolated because of coronavirus concerns, emphasising that they have detected no unusual movements in North Korea.
At a closed door forum on Sunday, South Korea’s Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with the North, said the government has the intelligence capabilities to say with confidence that there was no indications of anything unusual.
Rumours and speculation over the North Korean leader’s health began after he made no public appearance at a key state holiday on April 15, and has since remained out of sight.
South Korea media last week reported that Kim may have undergone cardiovascular surgery or was in isolation to avoid exposure to the new coronavirus.
Unification minister Kim cast doubt on the report of surgery, arguing that the hospital mentioned did not have the capabilities for such an operation.
Still, Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the foreign and unification committee in South Korea’s National Assembly, told a gathering of experts on Monday that Kim Jong Un’s absence from the public eye suggests “he has not been working as normally”.
“There has not been any report showing he’s making policy decisions as usual since April 11, which leads us to assume that he is either sick or being isolated because of coronavirus concerns,” Yoon said.
North Korea has said it has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, but some international experts have cast doubts on that claim.
On Monday, North Korean state media once again showed no new photos of Kim nor reported on his whereabouts.
However, they did carry reports that he had sent a message of gratitude to workers building a tourist resort in Wonsan, an area where some South Korean media reports have said Kim may be staying.
“Our government position is firm,” Moon Chung-in, the top foreign policy adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said in comments to news outlets in the United States.
“Kim Jong Un is alive and well. He has been staying in the Wonsan area since April 13. No suspicious movements have so far been detected.”
Satellite images from last week showed a special train possibly belonging to Kim at Wonsan, lending weight to those reports, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project.
Though the group said it was probably the North Korean leader’s personal train, Reuters has not been able to confirm that independently, or whether he was in Wonsan.
A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry said on Monday she had nothing to confirm when asked about reports that Kim was in Wonsan.
Last week China dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signalled in terms of Kim’s health.
On Friday a South Korean source told Reuters their intelligence was that Kim Jong Un was alive and would likely make an appearance soon.
Experts have cautioned that Kim has disappeared from state media coverage before, and that gathering accurate information in North Korea is notoriously difficult.
North Korea’s state media last reported on Kim’s whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11.
Kim, believed to be 36, vanished from state media for more than a month in 2014 and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.
Source: Reuters
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