Mushrooms and tangerines: two Koreas swap food gifts

Fifty tons of Jeju tangerines are being loaded onto a South Korean Air Force C-130 at Jeju International Airport, Sunday. Cheong Wa Dae sent a gift of 200 tons of tangerines to North Korea between Sunday and Monday, in return for the North's decision to send boxes of pine mushrooms as a gift for separated family members in South Korea during the inter-Korean Summit in Pyongyang in September. / Yonhap

By Park Ji-won

Cheong Wa Dae sent a gift of 200 tons of tangerines to North Korea, in return for the North's decision to send boxes of pine mushrooms as was agreed at the third inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, the presidential office said Sunday.

Presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said four C-130 South Korean cargo planes carrying the oranges left the southern resort island of Jeju for the North Korean capital at 8 a.m.

The 200 tons of tangerines, packed separately into 20,000 boxes, have been delivered to the North in four shipments starting Sunday and continuing today.

“Tangerines were chosen because they are in season at the moment, and it is a kind of fruit that has rarely been seen in North Korea," Kim told reporters, adding that Cheong Wa Dae was hoping for the tangerines to be distributed to as many North Korean people as possible. “It is a reciprocal gift after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent two tons of pine mushrooms after the recent Pyongyang summit.”

The pine mushrooms, a North Korean specialty, were distributed to families who were separated due to the 1950-53 Korean War, with 500 grams in each box

Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung and Suh Ho, presidential secretary for unification policy, were responsible for overseeing the delivery of the fruit.

The delivery came a few days after President Moon Jae-in said he was still hoping to see the North Korean leader visit Seoul by the end of the year despite the slow progress of denuclearization talks due to “differing thinking” between key stakeholders in the talks over when and how denuclearization will take place.

While visiting Mt. Paektu with Kim Jong-un on the sidelines of the third in-person meeting in September, the President Moon said he is ready to invite Kim to the southern island “if he wishes.”

Jeju is South Korea's biggest island in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The place is known to be where Kim's maternal grandfather Ko Kyong-thaek was born and where Kim's family cemetery is located.