South Korea has sent 200 tonnes of tangerines to the North in return for mushrooms Pyongyang gave earlier, Seoul said Monday, in the latest reconciliatory…
South Korea has sent 200 tonnes of tangerines to the North in return for mushrooms Pyongyang gave earlier, Seoul said Monday, in the latest reconciliatory gesture between the neighbours.
Seoul is pushing ahead with a rapprochement with the nuclear-armed North while its security ally the US insists pressure on Pyongyang should be maintained until it denuclearises.
The tangerines — a rarity in the North — were being airlifted to Pyongyang from the southern island of Jeju, where they were grown, in four flights, the last one due Monday afternoon.
The fruits reciprocate two tonnes of pine mushrooms sent by the North’s leader Kim Jong Un during his September summit with the South’s President Moon Jae-in, Seoul’s presidential office said.
The pine mushrooms — a delicacy claimed to help prevent heart diseases and diabetes, and a key Northern export to China — were distributed to Southern families separated from relatives in the North.
“Tangerines are a speciality of the South that ordinary North Koreans normally don’t have access to,” Moon’s spokesman said Sunday.
