Billy Graham’s son meets NKorea’s top diplomat

SEOUL, South Korea — The son of veteran evangelist Billy Graham had a “friendly conversation” Wednesday with North Korea’s foreign minister, the state news agency said, as the American brought one of the first shipments of U.S. aid to the country in months.

The Rev. Franklin Graham, who heads relief agency Samaritan’s Purse, arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday to deliver aid, saying he hoped his visit would “play the role of a bridge for better relations” between the U.S. and North Korea, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. In March, Pyongyang kicked out U.S. aid agencies.

On Wednesday, Graham held talks with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun in what KCNA labeled a “friendly conversation” in a one-sentence dispatch. Graham offered a gift to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il via the country’s vice parliamentary speaker, KCNA said later.

Footage from APTN in North Korea showed Graham handing the speaker, Kim Yong Dae, a small, black sculpture of a man riding a horse. It also showed Graham visiting a hospital where his agency has installed a power generator.

He also presented North Koreans with a “mobile dental clinic,” a white vehicle equipped with dental equipment, according to the footage.

Samaritan’s Purse has said that Graham will oversee the delivery of $190,000 in equipment and supplies for a new dental school in Pyongyang, meet with high-level officials and visit one of three hospitals where the group has installed electricity generators.

In March, North Korea began refusing American food shipments and booted out all U.S. aid groups operating in the country. Then it launched a long-range rocket and conducted a nuclear test, drawing a raft of U.N. sanctions. In response to the measures, North Korea pulled out of international disarmament talks.

But more recently, the North has indicated it would be willing to restart those negotiations if it were able to hold direct talks with Washington — a long-held goal of the reclusive regime. In an apparent attempt to bolster its negotiating position ahead of any talks, the North fired several missiles off its eastern coast on Monday.

Billy Graham’s family has had relations with the communist North for years. The senior Graham went to North Korea in 1992 and in 1994 at the invitation of late North Korean President Kim Il Sung, father of Kim Jong Il.