N KOREA INVITES SOUTH KOREAN PREZ FOR SUMMIT
AN INTERKOREAN SUMMIT WOULD BE THE THIRD OF ITS KIND
GANGNEUNG, SOUTH KOREA : North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Saturday invited the South’s President Moon Jae-in for a summit in Pyongyang, Seoul said, even as the US warned against falling for Pyongyang’s Olympic charm offensive.
The invitation, delivered by Kim’s visiting sister Kim Yo Jong, said Kim was willing to meet the South’s leader “at the earliest date possible”, said a spokesman for the presidential Blue House.
An inter-Korean summit would be the third of its kind, after Kim’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il met the South’s Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun in 2000 and 2007 respectively, both of them in Pyongyang.
Moon did not immediately accept the invitation. But the prospect could sow division between the dovish leader, who has long argued for engagement with the nuclear-armed North to bring it to the negotiating table, and US President Donald Trump, who last year traded personal insults and threats of war with Kim. Washington insists that Pyongyang, facing several UN Security Council sanctions, must take concrete steps towards denuclearisation before any negotiations can happen.
After months of silence on whether it would even take part in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in the South, the Games have driven a rapprochement on the peninsula, while the North’s athletes, performers and delegates have dominated the headlines.