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Summit peak: Mt. Paektu final stop of North-South meeting
SEOUL, Sept 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – An active volcano, Mount Paektu is the
tallest peak on the Korean peninsula and often considered the spiritual home
of the Korean nation.
For all Koreans, it is the mythical birthplace of Dangun, the legendary
founder of the first Korean kingdom more than 4,000 years ago.
The 2,744-metre (9,003-foot) peak is referenced in the first verse of the
South Korean national anthem, and “Let’s go to Mount Paektu” is a popular
North Korean pop song calling for loyalty to Kim Jong Un.
Kim and Moon Jae-in went to the peak together on Thursday, in the last act
of the South Korean president’s three-day visit to the North.
“Mount Paektu is the spiritual mountain for the Korean people and it’s the
most symbolic mountain,” Moon’s spokesman told reporters.
For North Koreans, it is also where Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder and
Kim’s grandfather, set up a secret military camp for anti-Japanese guerrilla
missions during the 1910-45 colonial rule.
North Korea claims his son and successor Kim Jong Il was born there,
although historians say he was actually born at a Soviet military base in
Siberia where the older Kim was in exile.
Regardless, Pyongyang refers to the ruling Kim family as the “Paektu
bloodline” and the peak is a favoured backdrop for the propaganda murals of
the elder Kims, either singly or together, that are ubiquitous in the North.
The current North Korean leader makes frequent visits to the mountain. He
hiked to the top of the peak in December — his last known trip — before the
New Year speech in which he kickstarted his diplomatic overtures.
Despite its revered status on both sides of the border, South Koreans can
only visit the mountain through China.
Known as Changbai in Chinese, the border between China and North Korea runs
across the peak’s beautiful crater lake.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty,
leaving the two Koreas still technically still engaged in a war that placed
an impenetrable border and banned all civilian exchanges between them.
They agreed in 2007 to open tours to the peak for South Koreans and to run
direct flights between it and Seoul, but the plan was never put into effect.
Seoul suspended South Korean tours to Mount Kumgang — another scenic
mountain in the North — in 2008 after a tourist was shot dead by a North
Korean soldier.
Moon’s office quoted him as saying on board his aircraft when he arrived in
Pyongyang: “I had vowed that I’d visit Mount Paektu, but from the North
rather than from China.”
BSS/AFP/FI/0944 hrs