Two Koreas commit to denuclearisation
Leaders also agree to seek permanent end to the Korean War at historic summit
GOYANG, South Korea: The leaders of North and South Korea agreed yesterday to pursue a permanent peace and the complete denuclearisation of the divided peninsula, as they embraced after a historic summit laden with symbolism.
In a day of bonhomie including a highly symbolic handshake over the Military Demarcation Line that divides the two countries, the pair issued a declaration on ‘the common goal of realising, through complete denuclearisation, a nuclear-free Korean peninsula’.
Upon signing the document, the two leaders shared a warm embrace, the culmination of a summit filled with smiles and displays of friendship in front of the world’s media. They also agreed that they would this year seek a permanent end to the Korean War, 65 years after the hostilities ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Moon would visit Pyongyang in ‘the fall’, the two leaders said, also agreeing to hold ‘regular meetings and direct telephone conversations’.
The so-called Panmunjom Declaration capped an extraordinary day unthinkable only months ago, as the nucleararmed North carried out a series of missile launches and its sixth atomic blast.
Kim said he was ‘filled with emotion’ after stepping over the concrete blocks into the South, making him the first North Korean leader to set foot there since the shooting stopped in the Korean War.
At Kim’s impromptu invitation the two men briefly crossed handin-hand into the North before walking to the Peace House building on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom for the summit – only the third of its kind since hostilities ceased in 1953.
“I came here determined to send a starting signal at the threshold of a new history,” said Kim. After the summit, he pledged that the two Koreas will ensure they did not “repeat the unfortunate history in which past inter-Korea agreements ... fizzled out after beginning”.
The two previous Korean summits in 2000 and 2007, both of them in Pyongyang, also ended with displays of affection and similar pledges, but the agreements ultimately came to naught.
With the North’s atomic arsenal high on the agenda, South Korean President Moon Jae-in responded that the North’s announced moraorium on nuclear testing and long-range missile launches was ‘very significant.’
It was the highest-level encounter yet in a whirlwind of nuclear diplomacy, and intended to pave the way for a muchanticipated encounter between Kim and US President Donald Trump.
Last year Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear blast, by far its most powerful to date, and launched missiles capable of reaching the US mainland. Its actions sent tensions soaring as Kim and Trump traded personal insults and threats of war.
Moon seized on the South’s Winter Olympics as an opportunity to broker dialogue between them, and has said his meeting with Kim will serve to set up the summit between Pyongyang and Washington.
The White House said it hoped the summit would ‘achieve progress toward a future of peace and prosperity for the entire Korean Peninsula’.
Trump has demanded the North give up its weapons, and Washington is pressing for it to do so in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way.
Seoul had played down expectations before the summit, saying the North’s technological advances in its nuclear and missile programmes made the summit ‘all the more difficult’.
Pyongyang is demanding as yet unspecified security guarantees to discuss its arsenal. Moon said he hoped they would have further meetings on both sides of the border, and Kim offered to visit Seoul ‘any time’ he was invited.
After a morning session lasting an hour and 40 minutes, Kim crossed back to the North for lunch, a dozen security guards jogging alongside his limousine. Before the afternoon session, Moon and Kim held a symbolic tree planting ceremony on the demarcation line.
The soil came from Mount Paektu, on the North’s border with China, and Mount Halla, on the South’s southern island of Jeju. After signing the agreement the leaders and their wives attended a banquet before Kim was to return to the North. — AFP
I came here determined to send a starting signal at the threshold of a new history. Kim Jong-un, North Korea leader
SEOUL: When Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un came down the steps towards the inter-Korean border yesterday he was escorted by a phalanx of bodyguards carefully chosen for their fitness, marksmanship, martial arts skills and even looks.
Men in sharp suits and matching blue and white striped ties fanned out ahead of and around Kim as he approached the Military Demarcation Line for a historic handshake with his Southern counterpart Moon Jae-in.
Some of the men had bulging pockets. All sported red North Korean lapel badges and the curlywired earpieces beloved of the US Secret Service.
As the leader left after the morning session of talks, a dozen of them were given a pre-lunch work-out, jogging alongside and behind Kim’s official car to form a human shield, ties flapping as they ran.
North Korea is one of the world’s most tightly-controlled societies, but even so security for its leader is iron-clad.
Foreigners attending any event where Kim will be present must go through hours of security procedures beforehand, and surrender all electronics, including phones.
The Guard Command, the military unit tasked with ensuring the safety of the leadership, is an elite institution close to the centre of North Korean power — it provides the centrepiece display
It is one of the world’s tightest security blankets through which even a single ant would find it hard to go.
of the annual kimjongilia and kimilsungia flower festivals in Pyongyang to honour Kim’s father and grandfather.
Ri Yong Guk, a defector from the North who served on a security detail for Kim Jong Il, wrote in a 2013 memoir that as many as six different layers of security guards protected the leader on trips to the countryside to inspect military units, plants or farms.
“It is one of the world’s tightest security blankets through which even a single ant would find it hard to go,” he wrote.
Thearrangementsforthecurrent leader are reportedly even tighter, and during a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the foundation of its regular armed forces in February, Pyongyang paraded three kinds of security units dedicated to protecting Kim’s life.
Kim was repeatedly seen accompanied by a stout military general in uniform with a holstered gun.
The protection afforded to the Kim family was also on display when the leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong visited the South for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, accompanied by tall bodyguards with crew cuts, sunglasses and earpieces. Former US president Bill Clinton once described the Demilitarised Zone that divides the peninsula and where yesterday’s summit was being held as ‘the scariest place on Earth’.
Despite its name, the DMZ is among the most heavily fortified areas on the planet.
Around 50 kilometres north of the South Korean capital Seoul, the four-kilometre-wide space stretches for 250 kilometres across Korea and bristles with electric fences, minefields and anti-tank barriers.
At the joint security area at Panmunjom the two sides, technically still at war, come faceto-face, with stern South Korean guards — also chosen for their height and looks — standing stock still only metres from the North Korean positions.
Soldiers are permitted to carry only sidearms in the area, but it is an open secret that both sides have larger weapons stashed nearby for use in case of emergencies.
In November a North Korean soldier defected under a hail of automatic rifle fire from his comrades.
Back in 1984, a 22-year-old Soviet tourist bolted from North to South at Panmunjom, triggering a gun battle in which three pursuing North Korean soldiers were killed, along with a Southern trooper, although defector Vasily Matuzok was unharmed. — AFP
Ri Yong Guk, North Korea defector