KOREAS’ SUMMIT BEGINS
However, analysts play down expectations
SOUTH Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jongun drove together through the streets of Pyongyang yesterday past thousands of cheering citizens before opening a summit, where Moon will seek to reboot stalled denuclearisation talks between his host and the United States.
Jong-un and Jae-in embraced at Pyongyang’s international airport, where the North Korean leader had supervised missile launches last year as tensions mounted.
Thousands of residents, holding bouquets and chanting in unison “Reunification of the country”, lined the streets as Jong-un and Jae-in rode through the city in an open-topped vehicle, passing the Kumsusan Palace where Jong-un’s predecessors — his father and grandfather — lie in state.
Jae-in, whose parents fled the North during the three-year Korean War, and Jong-un later began their formal talks.
The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the summit “will offer an important opportunity in further accelerating the development of inter-Korean relations that is making a new history”.
The first visit by a South Korean president to Pyongyang in a decade is also the two leaders’ third meeting this year.
Jae-in has been instrumental in brokering the diplomatic thaw that saw a historic summit between Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June, where the North Korean leader backed the denuclearisation of the peninsula.
But no details were agreed, and Washington and Pyongyang have sparred since over what that means and how it will be achieved.
With Seoul and Washington moving at increasingly different speeds in their approaches to Pyongyang, Jong-un will look to secure more southern-funded projects.
For his part, the dovish Jae-in is looking to tie the two tracks closer together to reduce the threat of a devastating conflict on the peninsula.
Jae-in will hold at least two rounds of talks with Jong-un and try to convince him to carry out substantive steps towards disarmament that he can present to Trump, whom he is due to meet later this month on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“If this visit leads to the resumption of the US-North Korea talks, it would be significant enough in itself,” Jae-in was quoted as saying before departure.
But analysts played down expectations.
“The meeting will probably generate rosy headlines but do little to accelerate efforts to denuclearise North Korea,” Eurasia Group said.
Jong-un would push for enhanced North-South cooperation “especially in areas that promise economic benefits for the North”, it added.
“Progressives inside and outside Jae-in’s government will have strong incentives to inflate the summit’s accomplishments, initially obscuring what will likely be a lack of major deliverables.”