High-level talks to formally end war

NORTH Korea and South Korea will hold high-level talks today to discuss steps needed to uphold the pledge to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, South Korea said.

The meeting would focus on plans to implement a declaration that emerged from an April 27 inter-Korea summit, including promises to formally end the Korean War and pursue complete denuclearisation, the South’s unification ministry, which handles ties with the North, it said yesterday.

North Korea has said it will dismantle its nuclear bomb test site some time between Wednesday and Friday next week to uphold its pledge to cease tests, its state media reported on Saturday, a month ahead of a planned North Korea-US summit in Singapore.

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet on June 12, a scenario that until recently looked impossible given the insults and threats the two leaders exchanged over the past year as tension rose over the North’s relentless work on its missile and nuclear programmes.

But Kim called in a New Year’s speech for a reduction in military tension, beginning a rapid easing of tension.

North Koreans appeared optimistic about the summit, the chief of the UN World Food Programme, David Beasley, said in Seoul after a trip to the North.

“I think they are hopeful. I think everyone on the ground there was hopeful,” Beasley said when asked whether the North Koreans he met had mentioned anything about the summit.

Beasley, who visited the North from May 8 to May 11, said WFP officials had been granted unprecedented access to some areas and had held open, candid and frank discussions with officials there.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday the United States would agree to lift sanctions on North Korea if it agreed to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, a move that could create economic prosperity that will rival that of South Korea.

Last month, Pompeo became the first known US official to meet Kim, where he helped lay the groundwork for the meeting with Trump.

He returned to North Korea again this month for a second meeting, after which Kim agreed to the release of three American prisoners. A South Korean presidential adviser warned that an incremental North Korean approach to denuclearisation at the June 12 summit would not be acceptable to Trump or the South Korean public.

“When Kim Jong-un sees President Trump in Singapore, he should give something big,” the security adviser, Moon Chung-in, said in Tokyo.

Meanwhile, disarmament experts have raised questions about the safety and verification of North Korea’s shutdown of its nuclear test site.

North Korea has invited international media to witness the destruction of the site, but not technical inspectors, leaving disarmament experts and nuclear scientists wondering how effective the plan is – and whether it will be safe. Yesterday, North Korea invited one news agency and one television broadcaster from South Korea to observe the shutdown, the South’s Ministry of Unification said.

South Koreans cannot visit North Korea without an invitation from the North and approval from their government.

Today’s meeting will take place at the Peace House in Panmunjom, on the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, where the two sides signed their joint-declaration last month, the unification ministry said.

“Through these high-level talks we will negotiate and implement measures to carry out the Panmunjom Declaration and build sustainable development for inter-Korean relations and permanent peace on the Korean peninsula,” the ministry said.

South Korea’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon will lead a team of five at the talks.

North Korea’s 29-member delegation will be led by Ri Son-gwon, chairman of its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the country.

Also in the delegation will be Kim Yun-hyok, vice-minister of railways, and Won Kil-U, vice-minister of physical culture and sports.