United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon is scheduled to visit North Korea this week. The visit to North Korea by the former South Korean Foreign Minister is the first one in twenty years.
Early this year in May, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon was supposed to visit North Korea, but the North Korean government unexpectedly cancelled the visit, just one day before he was supposed to arrive in the country. The UN secretary general was said to see industrial complex in the Kaesong economic zone run jointly by the North and South, BBC reports.
According to Ban Ki-Moon, he wanted to encourage reconciliation between the two nations, North Korea and South Korea. Furthermore, Ban Ki-Moon stated early this year, that he “urge North Korea to co-operate with the international community for the Korean Peninsula and for peace and stability”, BBC reports.
North Korea is also under great scrutiny by UN, EU and US sanctions for its nuclear tests.
Earlier this May, while speaking in the South Korean capital, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, had urged North Korea to willingly end its nuclear program so to improve North Korea’s relationship with the international organization, specially the UN and other world leaders.
North and South Korea have long been divided by political ideologies. In 1946, the North established the North Korea’s Communist Party, supported by the Soviet Union, installed Red Army to train Kim II Sung, former supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The South, on the other hand was supported militarily by the US and UN. When the South declared independence, it sparked the North Korean Invasion and Korean War which killed at 2.5 million people.
From that day on forward, these two nations have become divided peninsula.
BBC says Mr. Ban Ki-Moon would likely meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un during his trip, but there was no exact date as to when his visit would be officially set.
