World leaders praise Korean summit
World leaders welcomed the summit yesterday between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim Jong-un, describing it as a positive development.
In a Twitter post, US President Donald Trump praised the meeting, acknowledging the historic event as he cast doubt over how long positive diplomacy may last.
“After a furious year of missile launches and Nuclear testing, a historic meeting between North and South Korea is now taking place. Good things are happening, but only time will tell!” Trump wrote.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan welcomed the summit as a positive step, strongly expecting Pyongyang to take concrete steps toward carrying out its promises.
Russia praised it as a “very positive news,” saying the direct dialogue on the divided peninsula was promising.
“Today we see that this direct dialogue has taken place (and) it has certain prospects,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
China also heaped praises on the two leaders, calling their handshake over the Military Demarcation Line that divides the peninsula a “historic moment.”
“We applaud the Korean leaders’ historic step and appreciate their political decisions and courage,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing. “We hope and look forward to them taking this opportunity to further open a new journey of longterm stability on the peninsula.”
China is North Korea’s sole major ally, but it has supported a series of United Nations sanctions to punish Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile tests.
Beijing has pressed for dialogue to peacefully resolve the nuclear crisis.
The dramatic meeting, aimed at ending their decades-long conflict, comes weeks before Kim is due to meet Trump to discuss denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.
“We are at a starting line today, where a new history of peace, prosperity and inter-Korean relations is being written,” Kim said before the two Korean leaders and top aides began talks at the border truce village of Panmunjom.
South Koreans took a pause from their normal routines yesterday to watch history unfold and get a glimpse of Kim, the leader they normally only see in heavily edited footage, walk across the border, with his every word broadcast live and unfiltered on airwaves across the country.
It was a dramatic change for South Koreans who are banned from accessing media considered pro-North, which regularly publish propaganda images of Kim.
Major South Korean television networks cancelled their usual programming for wall-to-wall coverage of the interKorean summit.
The South Koreans used the rare opportunity of seeing raw footage of Kim to speculate on everything—from his speech habits to his health.
When Moon and Kim reached across the Military Demarcation Line to shake hands yesterday, they symbolically united a peninsula that has been divided for decades. The handshake marked the latest milestone in a rapid rapprochement after months of global fears about a nuclear conflict.
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 a fresh conflict on the Korean peninsula.
In a statement, officials said North and South Korea will hold a reunion in August of families left divided when the Korean War ended 65 years ago. Around 57,000 families in the South still have members in the North, one of the most emotive issues remaining from the conflict.