N Korea hails Trump

DMZ meeting between leaders ‘historic’ but analysts divided

NORTH Korea yesterday hailed the weekend meeting between leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in the Demilitarized Zone as “historic”, as analysts said Pyongyang was looking to shape the narrative to its own agenda.

The two leaders agreed to “resume and push forward productive dialogues for making a new breakthrough in the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

After a Twitter invitation by the US president on Saturday, the two men met a day later in the strip of land that has divided the peninsula for 66 years since the end of the Korean War, when the two countries and their allies fought each other to a standstill.

Kim and Trump shook hands over the concrete slabs dividing North and South before Trump walked a few paces into Pyongyang’s territory – the first US president ever to set foot on North Korean soil.

“The top leaders of the DPRK and the US exchanging historic handshakes at Panmunjom” was an “amazing event”, KCNA said, describing the truce village as a “place that had been known as the symbol of division” and referring to past “inglorious relations” between the countries.

The meeting took place “at the suggestion of Trump”, it added. The impromptu meeting in the DMZ – where the US president said they agreed to resume working-level talks within weeks on the North’s nuclear program – was full of symbolism.

Trump’s border-crossing – which he said was uncertain until the last moment – was an extraordinary sequel to the scene at Kim’s first summit with Moon Jae-in last year, when the young leader invited the South Korean president to walk over the Military Demarcation Line.

“It was an honour that you asked me to step over that line, and I was proud to step over the line,” Trump told Kim.

Analysts have been divided on Sunday’s events, some saying they spurred new momentum into deadlocked nuclear talks, while others described them as “reality show theatrics”.