US experts to witness plant closure
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jongun plans to invite experts and journalists from the United States and South Korea when the country closes its nuclear test site in May, Seoul officials said yesterday, as US President Donald Trump pressed for total denuclearisation ahead of his own meeting with Kim.
On Friday, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jaein vowed ‘‘complete denuclearisation’’ of the Korean peninsula in the first interKorean summit in more than a decade, but the declaration did not include concrete steps to reach that goal.
North Korea’s state media had said before the summit that Pyongyang would immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, scrap its nuclear test site and instead pursue economic growth and peace.
Kim told Moon he would soon invite the experts and journalists to ‘‘open to the international community’’ the dismantling of the facilities, the Blue House said.
‘‘The United States, though inherently hostile to North Korea, will get to know once our talk begins that I am not the kind of person who will use nuclear weapons against the South or the United States across the Pacific,’’ Moon’s press secretary Yoon Youngchan quoted Kim as saying.
‘‘There is no reason for us to possess nuclear weapons while suffering difficulties if mutual trust with the United States is built through frequent meetings from now on, and an end to the war and nonaggression are promised.’’
Kim said two larger tunnels at the Punggyeri test site remain ‘‘in a very good condition’’. Experts have said the existing one collapsed after repeated explosions, rendering much of the site useless.
To ease future crossborder cooperation, Kim pledged to scrap the unique time zone Pyongyang created in 2015. He said the North would move its clocks forward 30 minutes to be in sync with the South, nine hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.
Kim also reaffirmed that he would not use military force against the South and raised the need for an institutional mechanism to prevent unintended escalations, Yoon said.
Late on Saturday, Trump told Moon in a phone call he was pleased the leaders of the two Koreas reaffirmed the goal of complete denuclearisation during their summit, Seoul officials said yesterday.
Moon and Trump agreed on the need for an early summit between Trump and Kim, and explored two to three potential locations, the Blue House said.
The candidates for the venue
❛ There is no reason
for us to possess nuclear weapons . . . if mutual trust with the United States is built
Kim Jongun
did not include North Korea, the US or the demilitarised zone dividing the two Koreas, a Blue House official told reporters.
A senior U.S. official has said Singapore is being considered as a possible venue for the TrumpKim summit.
‘‘Trump said it was good news for not only the two Koreas but the whole world that they affirmed the goal of realising a nuclearfree Korean peninsula through a complete denuclearisation,’’ Blue House spokesman Kim Euikyeom told a separate briefing.
‘‘Moon told Trump that Kim said he and Trump would get along with each other . . . and Trump was looking forward to talks with Kim and there would be a very good result.’’
Trump, who called the 75minute chat ‘‘a long and very good talk’’ on Twitter, said his summit with Kim would take place in the next three to four weeks.
The White House said Trump and Moon during the call ‘‘emphasised that a peaceful and prosperous future for North Korea is contingent upon its complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation.’’
Trump had informed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he would urge North Korea to promptly resolve its abductions of Japanese citizens, the White House said.
Moon also had a phone call with Abe yesterday and said he had discussed the abduction issue with Kim during the summit ‘‘in substantial detail,’’ the Blue House spokesman said.
Pyongyang admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies. Five of them returned to Japan, but Tokyo suspects that hundreds more may have been taken.
‘‘Moon relayed Abe’s wish for a normalisation of bilateral ties to Kim based on the clearing of historical legacy issues, and that Kim expressed his willingness to talk to Japan at any time,’’ the official said.
Most of the specific commitments outlined in the official declaration signed by Kim and Moon focused on interKorean relations and did not clear up the question of whether Pyongyang is willing to give up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.