South Korea sheds some Christmas light on North

SEOUL (AFP) - South Korean church groups have displayed Christmas lights near the tense border with North Korea, an official said on Sunday, despite concerns about a violent response from Pyongyang.

Dozens of church leaders and followers put up the giant display - featuring thousands of glittering light bulbs on a tree-shaped steel tower - near the heavily-fortified border on Saturday, a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.

The lights on a military-controlled hill in Gimpo, west of Seoul, will be displayed until early January and can apparently be seen several kilometres away in the impoverished North suffering from chronic power shortage.

Before the South's "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with North Korea launched in 1998, the seasonal lighting displays were common.