UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been petitioned by prominent women from 38 countries to bring a permanent peace to end the Korean War. The conflict ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Image: REUTERS
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Women leaders from 38 countries have sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urging him to initiate a peace process that would officially end the Korean War before he leaves office.
The letter was co-sponsored by Women Cross DMZ, which organized a peaceful walk across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) last year and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, had promised such an initiative before taking office in 2007. North and South Korea technically remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
As a result the DMZ, separating the two Koreas is the most heavily fortified border in the world.
Border watch tower over the demilitarized zoneImage: picture alliance/Robert Harding
The letter to Ban was signed by 132 women, including 22 from South Korea. It urges Ban to initiate a peace process via the UN Security Council with the aim of concluding it by 2018, "the 70th anniversary of Korea's division into two separate states."
At a press conference to announce the letter, Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace said: "The secretary-general has the opportunity to build on his own legacy as the world's most important peacemaker." She added "Ban can demonstrate that nuclear threats can be met with a diplomatic recipe of engagement, lifting sanctions, and promise of trade and aid, in exchange for North Korea giving up its nuclear ambition."
Napalm girl
The signatories of the letter include American women's rights activists Gloria Steinem and Eve Ensler, Nobel Peace laureates Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and UNESCO goodwill ambassador Kim Phuc.
Phuc, more commonly known as ‘Napalm girl' became an international symbol for the horrors of war in 1972 when, as a 9-year-old girl, she was photographed running down a road screaming, after a napalm attack on her Vietnamese village.
Valerie Plame, reported to be a CIA operative in 2003 also signed the letter.
The initiative came as tensions continue to rise on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea has alarmed its South Korean neighbor and their western allies with a series of nuclear and missile tests.
In response, the US has agreed to deploy a sophisticated missile defense system, known as THAAD, in the South. Further tests by North Korea have accelerated plans for the anti-missile deployment.
Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told a US congressional hearing that the timing was up to the Pentagon.
But he added: "Given the accelerating pace of North Korea's missile tests, we intend to deploy on an accelerated basis - I would say as soon as possible."
bik/jm (AP, Reuters, dpa)
North Korea in pictures: a rare glimpse into the isolated country
A team of journalists explored North Korea for a week, accompanied by officials who monitored the images and ensured not a single citizen was interviewed. The secluded country opened up and revealed itself.
The reporters from AP covered over 2,150 kilometers (1,336 miles), in a country of barely 25,000 kilometers of roads, merely 724 of those paved. They came back with only their photos as evidence of the life in the northern part of the secluded country. In the picture: A woman walks along a road southeast of Pyongyang in North Korea's North Hwanghae province.
A North Korean man sits by a cooking fire he built to roast potatoes and chicken in the town of Samjiyon, in Ryanggang province. Possibly more than any other populated place on earth, North Korea is terra incognita, but the AP team was granted access to see North Korea and travel through places that, they were told, no foreign journalist and few foreigners had been allowed to see before.
A boulder lies on a path near the peak of Mount Paektu in North Korea's Ryanggang province. North Koreans venerate Mount Paektu for its natural beauty, but more importantly because it is considered the home of the North Korean revolution. They also consider the mountain sacred as the place of their ancestral origin.
Farmers walk in a rainstorm with their cattle near the town of Hyesan, North Korea in Ryanggang province. "To get out of Pyongyang, we weaved our way around buses, streetcars, the black sedans of party officials and fleets of colorful new taxis that have over the past few years become commonplace," says Eric Talmadge, one of the jourmalists who participated in the journey.
Young North Korean schoolchildren help to fix pot holes in a rural road in North Korea's North Hamgyong province. The country's best road is the 200-kilometer stretch of highway connecting the capital to the east coast port city of Wonsan. Beyond Wonsan, potholes, cracks or sudden patches of dirt road make travel a bumpy experience.
North Korean residents walk on along a river in the town of Kimchaek, in North Korea's North Hamgyong province. The once-productive cities along its east coast, like the coal mining town of Kilju and the nearby city of Kimchaek - built around a sprawling but now eerily quiet ironworks complex - have become a rust belt, gritty and relentlessly gray.
The remains of lunch left on a restaurant table in the city of Wonsan, North Korea. The government "minders" accompanied the journalists throughout the entire trip. Like foreign tourists, the AP team only saw a bare trace of the deprivation residents experience. Most of the country's citizens cannot afford proper housing, let alone a visit to a restaurant.
The journalists' itineary was dictated by North Korea's terms. There would be no stopping to interview random people. "It's quite possible none of them had ever seen an American before," said AP's Eric Talmadge, "but our presence went unacknowledged. No glances were exchanged. No words were spoken." Here boys are playing soccer in the town of Hyesan, in the northern Ryanggang province.
North Korean men share a picnic lunch and North Korean-brewed and bottled Taedonggang beer along the road in North Korea's North Hwanghae province. This year, according to United Nations experts, the country could come closer to feeding itself than it has in decades. But hunger remains a serious problem, with a third of North Korean children stunted in growth due to poor nutrition.
A farmer carries a fully grown cabbage after harvesting it from the main crop which will be harvested early November, on the outskirts of Pyongyang. About four-fifths of North Korea's land is too rugged to farm. Providing enough food to feed the nation is a struggle for North Korea, which suffered a near cataclysmic famine in the 1990s.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Wong Maye-E
No detour allowed
A man works on his car as others sit next to the Wonsan Sea in North Korea. For the most part, AP's reporters were not allowed to detour from their pre-approved route, which, to no one's surprise, did not include nuclear facilities or prison camps.
A group of young North Koreans enjoys a picnic on the beach in Wonsan. "Even on the loneliest of lonely highways, we would never be without a 'minder,' whose job was to monitor and supervise our activities," Talmadge explains. "We were not to take photographs of any checkpoints or military installations."
North Korean people rest next to the railroad tracks in a town in North Korea's North Hamgyong province. "Though we would not get to know the people along the way, the country itself had a great deal to say. And it was opening up before us," Talmadge said upon his return. "We had been granted unprecedented access."
