A pair of dogs, Gomi, left, and Songgang, are unveiled at a park in Gwangju, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. The dogs gifted by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un four years ago ended up being resettled at a zoo in South Korea following a dispute over who should finance the caring of the animals. 

SEOUL, South Korea — A pair of dogs gifted by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un four years ago ended up at a zoo in South Korea after a dispute over who should finance the caring of the animals.

Kim had given the two white Pungsan hunting dogs — a breed indigenous to North Korea — to then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in as a gift following their summit talks in Pyongyang in 2018. But liberal Moon gave up the dogs last month, citing a lack of financial support for the canines from the current conservative government led by President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The dogs, named Gomi and Songgang, were moved to a zoo run by a local government in the southern city of Gwangju last Friday, Dec. 9, after a temporary stay at a veterinary hospital in the southeastern city of Daeju, zoo officials said.

With Gwangju Mayor Kang Gijung in attendance, the dogs were shown off Monday with their nametags around their necks as journalists and other visitors took photos.

“Gomi and Songgang are a symbol of peace and South-North Korean reconciliation and cooperation. We will raise them well like we cultivate a seed for peace,” Kang said, according to his office.

The dogs have six offspring between them, all of them born after they came to South Korea. One of them, named Byeol, has been raised in the Gwangju zoo since 2019. The remaining five are in other zoos and a public facility in South Korea.

Gwangju zoo officials said they’ll try to raise Byeol and her parent dogs together, though they’re currently kept separately as they don’t recognize each other.

Gomi and Songgang officially belong to state property. While in office, Moon raised them at the presidential residence. After leaving office in May, Moon was able to take them to his private home thanks to a change of law that allowed presidential gifts to be managed outside the Presidential Archives if they were animals or plants.

But in early November, Moon’s office accused the Yoon government of refusing to cover the cost for the dogs’ food and veterinary care. Yoon’s office denied the accusation, saying it never prevented Moon from keeping the animals and that the discussions about providing financial support were still ongoing.

Moon, a champion of rapprochement with North Korea, was credited with arranging now-dormant diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program, but also faced criticism that his engagement policy allowed Kim to buy time and boost his country’s nuclear capability in the face of international sanctions. Yoon has accused Moon’s engagement policy of “being submissive” to North Korea.

In 2000, Kim’s late father, Kim Jong Il, gifted another pair of Pungsan dogs to then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung after their meeting in Pyongyang, the first inter-Korean summit since their division in 1948. Liberal Kim Dae-jung gave two Jindo dogs — a breed native to a South Korean island — to Kim Jong Il. The North Korean dogs lived at a public zoo near Seoul before they died in 2013.

It’s all downhill for 300 skiing Santas, a Grinch and a tree

NEWRY, Maine — A bunch of Santa lookalikes took to the ski slopes to spread some seasonal cheer on Sunday, Dec. 11.

More than 300 jolly ol’ elves — all dressed in red — dashed together down a mountain with white beards and Santa hats flapping in the breeze at the Sunday River ski resort in Maine. A skiing Grinch and a skiing Christmas tree joined the party.

It wasn’t exactly a winter wonderland — there was little natural snow. The snow-making machines at Sunday River produced enough of the fluffy stuff for the annual tradition. Santa Sunday has grown in popularity over more than two decades, raising $7,500 this year for a local charity.

Pricey pants from 1857 go for $114k, raise Levi’s questions

RENO, Nev. — Pulled from a sunken trunk at an 1857 shipwreck off the coast of North Carolina, work pants that auction officials describe as the oldest known pair of jeans in the world have sold for $114,000.

The white, heavy-duty miner’s pants with a five-button fly were among 270 Gold Rush-era artifacts that sold for a total of nearly $1 million in Reno last weekend, according to Holabird Western American Collections.

There’s disagreement about whether the pricey pants have any ties to the father of modern-day blue jeans, Levi Strauss, as they predate by 16 years the first pair officially manufactured by his San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. in 1873. Some say historical evidence suggests there are links to Strauss, who was a wealthy wholesaler of dry goods at the time, and the pants could be a very early version of what would become the iconic jeans.

But the company’s historian and archive director, Tracey Panek, says any claims about their origin are “speculation.”

“The pants are not Levi’s nor do I believe they are miner’s work pants,” she wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

Regardless of their origin, there’s no denying the pants were made before the S.S. Central America sank in a hurricane on Sept. 12, 1857, packed with passengers who began their journey in San Francisco and were on their way to New York via Panama. And there’s no indication older work pants dating to the Gold Rush-era exist.

“Those miner’s jeans are like the first flag on the moon, a historic moment in history,” said Dwight Manley, managing partner of the California Gold Marketing Group, which owns the artifacts and put them up for auction.

Other auction items that had been entombed for more than a century in the ship’s wreckage 7,200 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean included the purser’s keys to the treasure room where tons of Gold Rush coins and assayers ingots were stored. It sold for $103,200.