DPRK is willing to hold talks with Washington on denuclearization
THE Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is willing to hold talks with the US on denuclearization and will suspend nuclear tests while those talks are under way, South Korea said yesterday after a delegation returned from Pyongyang where it met leader Kim Jong Un.
The two Koreas, still technically at war but enjoying a sharp easing in tension since the Winter Olympics in South Korea last month, will also hold their first summit in more than a decade next month at the border village of Panmunjom, the head of the delegation, Chung Eui-yong, told a media briefing in Seoul.
“North Korea made clear its willingness to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and the fact there is no reason for it to have a nuclear program if military threats against the North are resolved and its regime is secure,” Chung said.
Chung cited the DPRK as saying it would not carry out nuclear or missile tests while talks with the global community were under way. The DPRK has not carried out any such tests since November last year.
“The North also said it can have frank talks with the United States on denuclearization and the normalization of ties between North Korea and the United States,” Chung said.
The prospect of talks between the DPRK and the US helped boost global stock markets, with the broadest gauge of global shares, MSCI’s All Country World Index , rising 0.6 percent and US stock futures pointing to a higher opening on Wall Street.
Washington and Pyongyang have been at loggerheads for months over the DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs, with US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un trading insults and threatening war. The DPRK has vowed never to give up its nuclear program, which it sees as an essential deterrent and “treasured sword” against US plans for invasion.
The US, which stations 28,500 troops in South Korea, denies any such plans.
To ensure close communication, the two Koreas, whose 1950-53 conflict ended in a mere truce, not a peace treaty, will set up a hotline between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim, Chung said.
The last inter-Korean summit was in 2007 when late former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun was in office.
The agreement came on the heels of a visit made by a 10-member South Korean delegation led by Chung to the DPRK capital Pyongyang on Monday in hopes of encouraging the DPRK and the United States to talk to one another.
Kim met senior South Korean government officials for the first time and said it was his “firm will to vigorously advance” inter-Korean ties and pursue reunification, the DPRK’s official news agency said.
Tensions between the two Koreas eased during the Olympics in South Korea, where Moon hosted a high-level North Korean delegation and the two sides presented a joint women’s ice hockey team. Kim had invited Moon to the DPRK for a summit, which was the first such request from its leader to a South Korean president.
The first inter-Korean talks in more than two years were held early this year to bring the DPRK to the Winter Olympics, when South Korea and the US also postponed an annual joint large-scale military exercise that the DPRK views as a preparation for invasion.
Chung said he would travel to the US to explain the outcome of the visit to the DPRK and that he had a message from Kim he would deliver to Trump.