By Yoo Dong-ho
Staff Reporter

Former President Kim Dae-jung on Monday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il should make a reciprocal visit to South Korea, calling it a ``responsibility’’ that he had to uphold.

``The matter has been delayed, but I believe it will take place,’’ he said, during an interview with a local television station, which was recorded in advance and will be aired Tuesday night.

During the 60-minute interview, the former South Korean president also said that the government should not have accepted calls for a special investigation into the transfer of funds to North Korea ahead of his summit with the North Korean leader Kim.

On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, Kim took part in a joint South-North international forum which kicked off in Seoul.

North Korea’s seven-member delegation led by Ri Jong-hyok, vice chairman of the Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, arrived here at 4 p.m. on a chartered North Korean flight via a direct route over the West Sea to attend the two-day conference.

Upon arrival, the northern delegation visited Kim, who led the historic summit with North Korean leader Kim in the North’s capital city of Pyongyang, initiating a thaw on the world’s last cold-war frontier.

``The June 15 Joint Declaration opened a new charter for national reconciliation, and I am happy to meet with you at a meaningful juncture when warships from the Koreas exchanged radio messages for the first time earlier today,’’ Kim said during one-on-on talks with the North’s top delegate Ri.

It was the first time that the former head of state and Nobel Peace Prize laureate has come into contact with Pyongyang officials since he fulfilled his five-year tenure in early 2002.

The Pyongyang delegation attended a banquet hosted by the former president.

With recent breakthroughs in cross-border military talks on the long-divided peninsula, attention was fixed on whether the Pyongyang delegation would deliver a signed letter or an invitation from the North’s leader Kim Jong-il.

The 79-year-old dissident-turned-president, has been hotly fingered as a shoo-in to serve as a special envoy to the communist neighbor amid the prolonged standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons program.

On the second day of the forum, the South and North Korean participants and other Korea experts from neighboring nations will sit together to identify current opportunities and constraints underlying the implementation of the 6.15 Joint Declaration.

Kim, who developed the ``Sunshine Policy’’ of engagement with Pyongyang, will deliver a special speech at the conference, followed by Lim Dong-won, ex-chief of the National Intelligence Service and former special envoy to the North, and other Korea watchers, including former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg.

In a related development, a 103-member North Korean delegation touched down at Inchon, west of Seoul, aboard the same airplane for separate events marking the fourth anniversary of the summit.

Meanwhile, a North Korean delegation will arrive here tomorrow to attend the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) symposium set to open later this week, Foreign Affairs-Trade Ministry announced on Monday.

The six-member team, led by Pak Jong-song, the North’s chief delegate to the inter-Korean economic talks, is to attend the ``ASEM Iron Silk Road’’ meeting here on June 17-18, a ministry spokesman said.

The two-day event will seek ways to create a ``21st century iron silk road’’ connecting the Koreas to other economies of the Pacific Rim and the rest of Asia, in addition to increasing cooperation between Asia and Europe.

yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr