Korean leaders meet for third summit
Tough talks loom over peace on peninsula, nuclear deal with U.S.
PYONGYANG, North Korea — South Korean President Moon Jae-in began his third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday with possibly his hardest mission to date — brokering some kind of compromise to keep North Korea’s talks with Washington from imploding and pushing ahead with his own plans to expand economic cooperation and bring a stable peace to the Korean Peninsula.
Kim gave the South Korean president an exceedingly warm welcome, meeting him and his wife at Pyongyang’s airport — itself a very unusual gesture — then riding into town with Moon in an open limousine through streets lined with crowds of North Koreans, who cheered and waved the flag of their country and a blueand-white flag that symbolizes Korean unity.
Hours after his arrival, Moon began an official summit with Kim at the ruling Workers’ Party headquarters. The two were joined by two of their top deputies — spy chief Suh Hoon and presidential security director Chung Eui-yong for Moon, and Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, and senior Workers’ Party official Kim Yong Chol for the North Korean leader, according to Moon’s office.
At the start of their meeting, Kim thanked Moon for brokering a June summit with President Donald Trump.
“It’s not too much to say that it’s Moon’s efforts that arranged a historic North Korea-U.S. summit. Because of that, the regional political situation has been stabilized and more progress on North Korea-U.S. ties is expected,” Kim said, according to South Korean media pool reports and Moon’s office.
Traveling on Moon’s government jet was Samsung scion Lee Jae-yong and other business leaders, underscoring Moon’s hopes to expand cross-border business projects. Currently, however, all major joint projects between the Koreas are stalled because of U.S.-led sanctions.
But the nuclear issue was sure to cast a shadow over negotiations on joint projects.
Before leaving Seoul, Moon vowed to push for “irreversible, permanent peace” and for better dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington.
“This summit would be very meaningful if it yielded a resumption of North Korea-U.S. talks,” Moon said Tuesday just before his departure. “It’s very important for South and North Korea to meet frequently, and we are turning to a phase where we can meet anytime we want.”
But as Moon arrived, the North’s main newspaper lobbed a rhetorical volley at Washington that could make Moon’s job all the more delicate, blaming the United States alone for the lack of progress in denuclearization talks.
“The U.S. is totally to blame for the deadlocked DPRK-U.S. negotiations,” the Rodong Sinmun said in an editorial, using the initials of the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.