KOREAN WAR TO END

SEOUL – The leaders of North and South Korea embraced yesterday after pledging to work for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” on a day of smiles and handshakes at the first inter-Korean summit in more than a decade.

The two Koreas announced they would work with the US and China this year to declare an official end to the 1950s Korean War and seek an agreement to establish “permanent” and “solid” peace.

The declaration included promises to pursue phased arms reduction, cease hostile acts, transform their fortified border into a peace zone and seek multilateral talks with other countries, including the United States.

“The two leaders declare before our people of 80 million and the entire world there will be no more war on the Korean peninsula and a new age of peace has begun,” the two sides said.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to visit the North Korean capital of Pyongyang this year, they said.

Earlier, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader since the 1950-53 Korean War to set foot in South Korea after shaking hands with his counterpart over a concrete curb

marking the border in the heavily fortified demilitarized zone.

Scenes of Moon and Kim joking and walking together marked a striking contrast to last year’s barrage of North Korean missile tests and its largest ever nuclear test that led to sweeping international sanctions and fears of war.

Global markets were lifted by hopes the summit would pave the way for the end of conflict on the Korean peninsula. Shares in Seoul briefly rose more than one percent to a one-month high and Japan’s Nikkei share average also gained.

As part of efforts to reduce tension, the two sides agreed to open a liaison office, stop propaganda broadcasts and leaflet drops along the border and allow Korean families divided by the border to meet.

Days before the summit, Kim said North Korea would suspend nuclear and longrange missile tests and dismantle its only known nuclear test site.

But there has been widespread skepticism about whether Kim is ready to abandon the nuclear arsenal his country has developed for decades, justifying it as a necessary deterrent against US invasion.

“Everything will not be resolved in the blink of an eye,” said Kim Young-hee, a North Korean defector-turned-economist at the Korea Development Bank.

“Kim Jong Un has put the ball in the US court. He declared denuclearization, and promised to halt nuclear tests,” she said. “That tells us he wants the United States to guarantee the safety of his regime ... in return for denuclearization.”

It is not the first time leaders of North and South Korea have declared hopes for peace. Two earlier summits, in Pyongyang in 2000 and 2007, failed to halt the North’s weapons programs or improve relations in a lasting way.

“We will make efforts to create good results by communicating closely, in order to make sure our agreement signed today before the entire world will not end as just a beginning like previous agreements before today,” Kim said after the agreement was signed.

Earlier, Moon greeted Kim at the military demarcation line where the men smiled and shookhands.

Moon and Kim released their joint declaration before attending a dinner banquet.

The US was hopeful talks would make progress on achieving peace and prosperity, the White House said in a statement.

The White House also said it looked forward to continuing discussions with South Korea in preparation for the planned meeting of Trump and Kim in coming weeks.

The US stations 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The war pitted the South, UN and US forces against the communist North, backed by China and Russia.

Although still a young republic emerging from the ashes of World War II, the Philippines was the first Asian country to send a contingent of soldiers – the third largest – to the Korean peninsula in response to the call of the UN to repel advancing communist forces threatening to overrun the entire Korea.

Under the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK), the Filipinos distinguished themselves especially in the defense of Yultong, where less than a thousand Filipino soldiers of the 10th Battalion Combat Team repulsed attacks by 40,000 Chinese soldiers and volunteer fighters in April 1951. The battle was said to have left 7,500 Chinese fighters and 24 Filipinos dead.

The Filipinos also emerged victorious – along with US forces – in an assault on a Chinese position called Eerie Hill. A young lieutenant named Fidel Ramos led 44 men in sabotaging the Chinese position to clear the way for final allied assault in 1952.

Out of the 7,420-strong PEFTOK members, 112 were killed in action, 229 wounded, 16 missing and presumed dead and 41 held as prisoners of war. A 17-year old journalist named Benigno Aquino Jr. covered the Korean War for the old Manila Times.

Smiles, handshakes at border

The golden doors on the stately North Korean building swung open and leader Kim Jong Un, in a black Mao suit and surrounded by a gaggle of officials, descended steps towards the border.

Not since the 1950-53 Korean War had a North Korean leader set foot on South Korean soil.

With a smile, Kim stretched out his hand toward a waiting, and smiling, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who stood between the squat, blue buildings that straddle the border at Panmunjom.

The village is one of the few places where there are no barbed wire fences or minefields between the two countries, separated by a conflict that ended with a truce, not a treaty, in 1953, meaning they are still technically at war.

“I was excited to meet at this historic place and it is really moving that you came all the way to the demarcation line to greet me in person,” Kim said as he grasped Moon’s hand across the border.

“It was your big decision to make it here,” said Moon, dressed in a dark suit and light blue tie, who invited Kim to step over the line in the pavement, which he did.

That’s something Kim’s grandfather, the North Korean regime’s founding leader Kim Il Sung, or his father, Kim Jong Il, never did.

Two previous summits between leaders of the Koreas, in 2000 and 2007, were in Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

Shaking hands again, Moon, 65, and Kim, 34, turned to face photographers in the North, and then the South, before Kim grabbed Moon’s hand and, in an unplanned move, invited him to step across the border into the North, where they stood face-to-face to talk a bit more.

Kim said he felt a “swirl of emotion” as he walked the short distance to the border, wondering “why it took so long,” he told Moon later, at the beginning of their meeting.

‘World is watching’

Later, as the afternoon sun set, the two men sat at a small table on a blue footbridge along the border for a halfhour private chat, at turns laughing and looking serious – an extraordinary scene given the tension just months ago, as a defiant North conducted missile and nuclear tests.

Since January, relations have improved. Their Olympic teams marched together under a common flag at February’s winter games in South Korea.

As the two men started their meeting in the Peace House on the southern side of the border, both seemed aware of the gravity of the occasion.

“The whole world is watching” with high expectations, Moon said. “We have a lot on our shoulders.”

He said Kim’s crossing of the border had transformed Panmunjom into a “sign of peace, not a sign of division.” Kim responded with equal optimism.

“With determination, we will be heading toward a better place to make up for the lost 11 years,” he said, referring to the last summit.

Their two-hour morning meeting was marked with laughter and some banter, as well as more serious discussion, behind closed doors, officials said.

‘High hopes’

At one point, Kim said he heard Moon was “always waking up early” because of North Korea’s missile tests and promised not to interrupt his sleep anymore, presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan told reporters.

The North invariably conducted its unannounced tests early in the day.

Kim mentioned the contentious issue of North Korean defectors – who are routinely denounced in North Korean media as “human scum” – and even referred to the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, which North Korean forces shelled in 2010, killing four people.

“Coming here, I saw people are having high hopes for the summits – including ... defectors and residents of Yeonpyeong Island – those who used to worry about North Korea’s missiles coming to them at any time,” Kim said, according to Yoon.

Kim said he had heard good things about a South Korean high-speed train built for the Winter Olympics, and expressed concern that North Korea’s traffic system would “cause inconvenience” should Moon visit.

The two men went back to their separate sides for lunch, Kim driven in a black limousine and escorted by a dozen bodyguards in dark suits and ties jogging alongside the vehicle.

In the afternoon, they planted a memorial tree and watered it with water from rivers in the South and North, before walking into a small glen along the border and across the blue footbridge for their private tete-a-tete as the sun set.

Afterwards, they strolled back to the Peace House, seemingly engrossed in conversation with no officials nearby.