Olympic torch gets protest-free relay in NKorea
SEOUL (AFP) — China's close ally North Korea staged an elaborate welcome Monday for the Beijing Olympic torch, mobilising tens of thousands of cheering citizens and criticising protests elsewhere in the world.
TV footage showed crowds dressed in their best clothes packing the streets of Pyongyang as the torch began its 20-kilometre (12 mile) relay route. It was the first time the Olympic flame had been carried in North Korea.
"Cheer for Beijing, Cheer for Pyongyang and Cheer for the Olympic Games," read one banner.
The relay finished on time at 0600 GMT when former marathon champion Jong Song-Ok kindled the Olympic cauldron in the Kim Il-Sung Stadium, named after the nation's founding president, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
"Holding the last torch and running to the cauldron reminded me of making a final dash in the marathon," Jong told Xinhua. She won the event at the 1999 World Athletics Championships.
Spectators burst into a storm of applause when the relay ended, Xinhua said, estimating the total number of relay spectators in the hundreds of thousands.
In some other cities the event has sparked rowdy protests against China's policies on Tibet and other issues. North Korea, a hardline communist state, clamps down sharply on dissent.
Reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il was absent from the launch ceremony at the Tower of the Juche Idea. Juche or self-reliance is the impoverished state's guiding ideology.
But Kim "is paying great interest in the success of the Olympic torch relay," Pak Hak-Son, chairman of the country's Olympic committee, was quoted by Japan's Kyodo News as saying.
"We express our basic position that while some impure forces have opposed China's hosting of the event and have been disruptive, we believe that consists of a challenge to the Olympic idea," Pak said.
De facto head of state Kim Yong-Nam handed the torch to the first runner, a hero of one of the nation's greatest sporting triumphs.
"This will be a beautiful memory that will be left with me," Pak Du-Ik, 71, told Kyodo after his 250-meter jog. "I will never forget this."
He scored the only goal in North Korea's famous 1-0 win over Italy which secured their place in the 1966 football World Cup quarter-finals.
Eighty bearers had been scheduled to carry the torch, mostly North Koreans but about a quarter of them Chinese nationals working or studying in the North.
Men in dark suits and women in traditional hanbok gowns waved artificial bunches of kimjongilia, a national flower named after their leader, as the relay got under way at 10:15 am.
Banners reading "Beijing 2008" were hung on both sides of the route.
The torch has been dogged by demonstrators since the Olympic flame was lit last month. Critics of China's crackdown in Tibet and its general human rights record severely disrupted the Paris and London legs.
Organisers in many other countries have been forced to surround the torch with unprecedented security to ensure a smooth passage.
During the South Korean leg Sunday, demonstrators including North Korean defectors staged protests against China's forced repatriation of refugees from the North.
There were sporadic clashes in Seoul between the protesters and thousands of Chinese students. The Seoul government on Monday expressed "strong regret" to Beijing's ambassador about the behaviour of some students.
China sends back all those North Koreans it catches as economic migrants, a policy strongly criticised by rights groups. Refugees face severe punishment, or even death in some cases, on their return.
The flame will be now be taken to Vietnam and then to Hong Kong and Macau, before starting the final leg of the relay in mainland China.
