BROTHERS IN DIS-ARMS
Kim, Moon vow to give up their nukes, end war in historic pact
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in pledged on Friday a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” bringing them a step closer to officially ending the Korean War.
The two leaders — who came together in the border village of Panmunjom for the first inter-Korea summit in more than a decade — embraced after announcing they would work with the US and China this year to end the war and seek an agreement to establish “permanent” and “solid” peace.
Although open hostilities between the nations ended 65 years ago, the two Koreas have technically remained at war because a peace treaty was never signed.
During Friday’s historic meeting, Kim and Moon shared jokes, handshakes and smiles but offered no specifics on how they would achieve the peace they promised.
The summit comes ahead of Kim’s anticipated meeting with President Trump, who vowed on Friday to place “maximum pressure” on North Korea until it abandons its nuclear program.
In a tweet Friday morning, Trump cheered the “end” of the Korean War and credited Chinese President Xi Jinping with helping bring the two countries together.
“KOREAN WAR TO END! The United States, and all of its GREAT people, should be very proud of what is now taking place
in Korea!” Trump wrote.
“Please do not forget the great help that my good friend, President Xi of China, has given to the United States, particularly at the Border of North Korea. Without him it would have been a much longer, tougher, process!” he added in another tweet.
Kim is now the first North Korean leader since the war began in 1950 to cross the border into the South.
Friday’s face-to-face marked an astonishing shift in mood and tone between the two Koreas.
The meeting of the two leaders occurred within walking distance of the spot where a North Korean soldier fled south in a hail of gunfire last year, and where North Korean soldiers killed two US soldiers with axes in 1976.
Although upbeat, Trump remained cautious.
“After a furious year of missile launches and Nuclear testing, a historic meeting between North and South Korea is now taking place,” he tweeted earlier Friday. “Good things are happening, but only time will tell!”
Trump is expected to meet with Kim in May or June. Speaking in the Oval Office during a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, the president said the planned sit-down with Kim had been narrowed down to “two or three” locations
“Hopefully, we are going to have great success . . . This is going to be a great thing for the world. This is going to be a great thing for Germany,” he said. “Angela and I have discussed it over a period of the last 15 months quite a bit.”
Asked whether he thought Kim was playing games with his pledge for denuclearization, Trump said he didn’t believe so.
“You know, it’s never gone like this. It has never gotten this far. I don’t think he’s ever had this enthusiasm for somebody, for them wanting to make a deal,” he said. “And, yeah, I agree, the United States has been played beautifully like a fiddle because you had a different kind of leader.”
In 2007, North Korea pledged to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and fuel but pulled out of that agreement two years later.
But Trump vowed that wouldn’t happen again.
“We’re not going to be played, OK?” he said. “We’re going to hopefully make a deal. The United States in the past has been played like a fiddle. We will, I think, come up with a solution. And if we don’t, we will leave the room.”
Even the most optimistic analysts were surprised at the extent of the Koreas’ agreement.
“You can’t ask for more than that,” John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, told The Washington Post.
“I’m surprised they would go this far at this early stage, that Kim Jong-un didn’t save this for his meeting with Trump,” Delury added.