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Lee Hee-ho, widow of former president Kim Dae-jung and chair of the Kim Dae-jung Peace Center, has delayed her visit to North Korea until May or June of 2015. According to the center, health concerns, including a recent bout of pneumonia and her advanced age of 93 years are the reasons for postponing the trip.

However, differences of opinion among Lee and the North and South Korean authorities in regard to her visit to the North are also thought to have influenced her decision.

“After our working-level meeting with North Korean officials on Nov. 21, we reviewed the timing of Lee‘s visit with her doctor and other medical officials. Given Lee’s physical condition following a two-month battle with pneumonia this past summer, which required her to be hospitalized, the doctors said that Lee must certainly not visit North Korea during the coldest time of the year,” The Kim Dae-jung Peace Center said in a press release on Dec. 12.

“Lee had been hoping to visit North Korea before the end of the year, but she has agreed to listen to her doctors and is delaying her visit until May or June of next year,” the center said.

On Monday morning, the center sent a fax to North Korea’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee to inform them of the delay.

While Lee emphasized health concerns as being the reason for the delay, political considerations about the timing of the visit are also presumed to have played an important role in the decision.

Lee had initially hoped to visit North Korea in November, according to one of her aides. “Lee had been planning to deliver wool mufflers and other aid supplies before the real cold begins in North Korea. Lee thought that if she could meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and bring back Kim Jeong-uk, a [South Korean] missionary who is currently detained in the North, she might be able to bring about a change in inter-Korean relations,” the associate said.

Lee reportedly had been hoping to serve as a kind of special envoy, similar to James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, who secured the release of two Americans imprisoned in North Korea during a recent visit to Pyongyang.

On the other hand, North Korea appears to have wanted Lee to come in December. During the inter-Korean working-level meeting on Nov. 21, North Korean officials said that they hoped Lee could visit as soon as possible, which Lee’s negotiators seem to have understood as a request for her to visit in December.

December 17 will mark the 3rd anniversary of the death of former leader Kim Jong-il in North Korea. Lee was concerned about the possibility that visiting during this period could lead to factional bickering inside South Korea. North Korea could have seized on the visit to claim that Lee was there to pay her respects to the late Kim Jong-il, while conservative groups in South Korea might have tried to politicize the issue.

In addition, the administration of President Park Geun-hye seems to have been leery of having Lee, who represents a former administration, in the spotlight of inter-Korean relations at a time, like the present, when those relations are stalled.

Lee’s decision to visit in May or June of next year seems to have been motivated by similar factors. She appears to have wanted to avoid January and February, during the dead of winter, and March and April, the period of the Key Resolve US-ROK joint military exercises as well as the birthday of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung.

By Son Won-je, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]