Female activists cross Korean divide

PAJU, South Korea - A group of international women activists made a rare crossing from North Korea into South Korea on Sunday, hailing the trip as a "first step in the right direction" toward bridging divisions between the estranged countries.

But the women - led by Gloria Steinem, the pioneering American feminist - did not walk across the demilitarized zone, as they had hoped, nor did they pass through the symbolic truce village of Panmunjom, where the armistice that halted the Korean War was signed. Both changes were indicative of the controversy that the event generated, amid accusations that the women were legitimizing Kim Jong Un's regime and ignoring its human-rights abuses.

As they crossed the 21/2-mile-wide strip that has divided the Korean Peninsula for more than 60 years, the women, all dressed in white and wearing rainbow-colored scarves, said the fact that the two Koreas agreed to the crossing at all was a sign of progress.

"I firmly believe it was a small but first step in the right direction," Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said as the women arrived in Paju on the southern side of the demilitarized zone, or DMZ.

Mairead Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work toward ending the conflict in Northern Ireland, said the women were "privileged to come across the DMZ." She added: "I'm saddened that many South Korean families cannot reunite with their family."

Other women on the trip, organized by the group WomenCrossDMZ, included Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink, who is more often seen protesting on Capitol Hill, and American documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney.

In Pyongyang, the women held a march in the center of the capital, with the blessing of the government, carrying a banner that said in English: "Calling for Women's Leadership in the Korean Peace Process."

As the women arrived in the South, they were greeted by a handful of protesters shouting phrases such as: "You are frauds!" and "Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il are international terrorists!"

The trip, which included events and seminars on women's issues in North Korea, followed by the crossing and similar events in South Korea, was billed by the organizers as a way to draw attention to the continued separation of the peninsula. Both Koreas technically remain at war because the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. Families remain separated by the division, and most people in the South do not have any contact with their relatives in the authoritarian North.

Asked about human rights when the group arrived in South Korea, Steinem told reporters the women had raised the issue.

"We were told by many people that mentioning human rights in North Korea would be a deal breaker, but it wasn't," she said.