North and South Korea’s leaders meet inside DMZ
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un met unexpectedly with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea on Saturday to discuss salvaging a cancelled summit meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump, Moon’s office said, a new twist in the whirlwind of diplomacy over the fate of the North’s nuclear arsenal.
The two leaders met for two hours on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, a “truce village” inside the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, said Yoon Young-chan, Moon’s spokesman.
Moon and Kim held their first summit meeting on the South Korean side of Panmunjom on April 27. Their second meeting, held in secret and announced only after it took place, came amid doubts about the future of Kim’s planned summit meeting with Trump.
Trump announced on Thursday that he was cancelling the
SEOUL:
planned meeting with Kim, which had been slated for June 12 in Singapore. But he said on Friday that he was reconsidering and that it may still take place as scheduled.
“The two heads of state had a frank exchange of views on the implementation of the April 27 summit agreement and for the successful holding of the North Korea-United States summit,” Yoon said in a short message sent to reporters.
It was unclear who proposed the second meeting between Kim and Moon.
Moon’s role as a facilitator for the Kim-Trump summit meeting was thrown into doubt when Trump abruptly announced that he was abandoning his plan to meet Kim, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from North Korea.
Moon’s government has worked for months to help set up the first meeting between the leaders of North Korea and the United States.