North, South Korea hold historic summit
JOHN REY O. SAAVEDRA
GOYANG, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South's President Moon Jae-in held a historic summit yesterday after shaking hands over the Military Demarcation Line that divides their countries, in a gesture laden with symbolism.
Kim said he was "filled with emotion" after stepping over the concrete blocks, making him the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the Korean War ended in an armistice 65 years ago. Kim will "open-heartedly discuss... all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations and achieving peace, prosperity and reunification of the Korean peninsula."
But it did not mention denuclearization, and as images of the leaders' handshake were beamed around the world, the North's state television showed only a test card.
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 in a statement that 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.
But Seoul played down expectations Thursday, saying the North's technological advances with its nuclear and missile programs meant any deal would be "fundamentally different in nature from denuclearization agreements in 1990s and early 2000s."
"That's what makes this summit all the more difficult," the chief of the South's presidential secretariat Im Jong-seok told reporters.
Pyongyang is demanding as yet unspecified security guarantees to discuss its arsenal.
When Kim visited the North's key backer Beijing last month in only his first foreign trip as leader, China's state media cited him saying that the issue could be resolved, as long as Seoul and Washington take "progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace."
In the past, North Korean support for denuclearization of the "Korean peninsula" has been code for the removal of US troops from the South and the end of its nuclear umbrella over its security ally -- prospects unthinkable in Washington.
Moon said he hoped they would have further meetings on both sides of the peninsula, and Kim offered to visit Seoul "any time" he was invited.
But Robert Kelly of Pusan National University warned that Pyongyang "hasn't really changed, and it hasn't offered a meaningful concession yet, "adding there were still "huge" strategic and political divisions between the North on one hand, and the South and the US on the other.
Yonsei University professor John Delury said the post-summit statement will give "a lot of chance to analyze every word, reading between the lines, look for things that are there and not there."