The Ministry of Unification has granted permission for a Buddhist group to undertake religious activities in North Korea for the first time since the implementation of the May 24th Measures in May, 2010.
An official from the ministry explained today, “We have granted permission for a visit to North Korea on the 3rd by 37 people including the executive chief of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. The visiting group is expected to go to Bohyun Temple at Mt. Mohyang in North Pyongan Province to have a Buddhist ceremony with a group from the North.”
“We accepted this visit with overall consideration given to its purely religious purpose and the fact that this year is the 1,000th anniversary of the engraving of the Tripitaka Koreana, part of our whole people’s inheritance,” the official added.
The Tripitaka Koreana is an errorless carving of the Buddhist scriptures on more than 80,000 wooden blocks, among the most famous of all Korean Buddhist relics. It is kept at Haeinsa, a Buddhist temple in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.
The government put a complete ban on all visits to the North except those of a humanitarian nature following the Cheonan sinking on March 26th, 2010. However, following this religious visit, it appears that a greater range of cultural and social exchanges may start to be accepted going forward.
The group is expected to travel via Beijing to Pyongyang tomorrow, returning via Shenyang following the ceremony at Bohyun Temple and visits to a range of sites in the Pyongyang region.
