SEOUL, March 4 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in decided Sunday to dispatch his special envoys to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on March 5, the first such dispatch in 11 years.
Chung Eui-yong, top national security advisor for Moon, will lead the special delegation, composed of five delegates and five working-level officials. Suh Hoon, director of the country's intelligence agency, was included in the delegation.
The delegation will make a two-day trip to Pyongyang for dialogues with senior DPRK officials on issues to improve inter-Korean relations and denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, according to the Blue House of South Korea.
South Korean leaders had sent special envoys to Pyongyang, mostly secretly and made known later, before reaching any historically significant agreement with the DPRK and holding the two inter-Korean summit talks.
The first known emissary was Lee Hu-rak, former intelligence agency chief who was sent in 1972 to the DPRK by then South Korean President Park Chung-hee to meet with the late DPRK founder Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the current leader Kim Jong Un.
Two months after his secret visit to Pyongyang, South Korea and the DPRK announced the joint communique on July 4, 1972, on three principles of the reunification of the two Koreas: independence, peaceful reunification, and great national unity.
It was the first communique to be agreed upon and jointly announced by the two Koreas since the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945.
Since then, South Korea had reportedly dispatched secret envoys to Pyongyang for communication with the DPRK side.
Before the historic inter-Korean summit meeting was held in Pyongyang in 2000, then liberal South Korean President Kim Dae-jung ordered his special envoys to meet with DPRK officials to discuss the first-ever summit talks since the 1950-1953 Korean War ended.
The Korean Peninsula remains technically in a state of war as the fratricidal war ended in armistice, not peace treaty.
Former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, Kim Dae-jung's successor, secretly dispatched then intelligence agency chief to the DPRK as a special envoy to arrange the second inter-Korean summit meeting.
Months after the dispatch, Roh and Kim Jong Il, then DPRK leader and father of the current leader, met in Pyongyang in October 2007.
