Koreas set peace summit
Official says rare meeting may include call to ease military tension
WASHINGTON — South and North Korea are said to be discussing plans to announce an official end to their 65-year-old military conflict at a landmark summit next Friday, only the third inter-Korean summit of its kind.
Citing an unnamed official in Seoul, the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper said that a joint statement may be released during the meeting between Moon Jae-in, the South’s president, and the North’s Kim Jong Un, pledging to seek to ease military tension and end confrontation.
If confirmed, it would be a significant political step in the rapidly warming ties since the start of the year.
The two nations are still technically at war as a peace treaty was never signed to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, and tensions last year over Pyongyang’s advancing nuclear and weapons program led to fears that military conflict was inevitable.
Moon reaffirmed his resolve to establish permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula, saying Tuesday that denuclearization of the North was a first priority.
Im Jong-seok, Moon’s chief of staff, said Kim was committed to denuclearizing the peninsula and had expressed a willingness to meet Donald Trump.
The U.S. president said he’s given South Korea his “blessing” to negotiate a peace deal with North Korea.
Trump also suggested he was responsible not only for the negotiations but also the success of this year’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.
“They’ve been very generous that without us and without me in particular, I guess, they wouldn’t be discussing anything and the Olympics would have been a failure,” Trump told reporters in Mar-a-Lago, where he is hosting Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for a two-day visit.
Trump said he will meet with Kim in “early June or before that assuming things go well.” If they don’t the summit with the North Korean leader might not happen, he added.
In a sign of the high stakes nature of the summit ahead, Moon was attending a Buddhist service of about 900 people who had gathered at a Seoul hotel to pray for its success.
“The complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the most urgent task that lies before us and a task we must complete peacefully,” he said, according to Yonhap, a news agency.
“I ask you to pray with a sincere hope to remove confrontation and division,” said Moon.
The two leaders will meet at Panmunjom on the highly militarized border zone that separates their two countries, close to the site where a young North Korean soldier was shot during a dramatic dash for freedom at the end of last year.