by Our Foreign Desk

FEMALE peace activists arrived in North Korea yesterday ahead of a planned march across the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) to South Korea.

Participants in the peace march include Nobel laureates Mairead Maguire and Leymah Gbowee and US feminist campaigner Gloria Steinem.

Both the North and South Korean governments have given their approval for the march on Sunday.

Before then, the group of about 30 women is to spend several days meeting North Korean women, touring hospitals and factories and holding an international women’s peace symposium.

After the crossing, they also plan to hold a peace march and a symposium in South Korea.

A statement by the group read: “There is nothing in this action that reflects prioritising of one or another government.

“To the contrary, we have prioritised reunification of families, equity and justice for women living on both sides of the DMZ and a peaceful solution to the only remaining cold war division.”

The two states have been formally at war for 65 years, as the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War was never replaced by a peace treaty.

The DMZ is heavily fortified, with frequent confrontations and incidents.

Speaking in the Chinese capital Beijing before her arrival in Pyongyang, Ms Steinem said: “It seems so surrealistic that here we are with the DMZ” despite the end of the cold war.

The groups’ arrival coincided with UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon announcing that he will visit the inter-Korean Kaesong industrial park just north of the DMZ on Thursday.

Mr Ban, who first visited the site in 2006, when he was South Korea’s foreign minister, said: “The Kaesong project is a win-win model for both Koreas.

“I hope my visit will provide positive impetus to further develop it and expand to other areas.”

Northern Irish peace campaigner Ms Maguire is the co-founder of Women for Peace and joined the 2010 aid flotilla to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Ms Gbowee is a leader of Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, which worked for an end to the second Liberian civil war from 1999 to 2003.

Ms Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine and a founder of Ms magazine.