Kim, Trump – now what?
SOUTH Koreans watched the historic meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un yesterday with a mixture of hope and scepticism, wondering whether it would be enough to relieve their biggest security concern – North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
The impromptu get-together at the inter-Korean border, where an armistice was signed 66 years ago to stop the fighting of a war that killed or injured millions, was Trump and Kim’s third overall meeting and first since their summit in February in Hanoi, Vietnam, collapsed over disagreements over sanctions relief.
Some South Koreans said the meeting – which saw Trump briefly step into North Korean territory to become the first US president to cross into the country – would help resolve a deadlock in nuclear negotiations and revive a positive atmosphere for peace.
However, others said it was yet another summit that was all style and no substance. They also raised concerns over what they viewed as South Korea’s declining voice in international efforts to deal with the North.
Since the Hanoi summit, North Korea has significantly slowed down dialogue and engagement with South Korea, while demanding that Seoul break away from Washington and resume inter-Korean economic projects held back by US-led sanctions against the North. Yesterday’s meeting between Trump and Kim at the border village of Panmunjom came days after the North vowed to “never go through” South Korea again when dealing with the US.
Min Jung-won, a 26-year-old graduate student in Seoul, expressed hope that the Trump-Kim meeting would help thaw bilateral relations between the Koreas.
But Kim Dae-won, a 40-year-old office worker in Suwon, south of Seoul, said the Trump-Kim meeting was a made-for-TV spectacle that failed to address fundamental differences between Washington and Pyongyang that were exposed in Hanoi.
He said the display of US and North Korean flags and the absence of South Korean flags at the South Korean side of the border village where the leaders met symbolised how Seoul got sidelined in the process to resolve the nuclear stand-off.
Kim has accused South Korea of acting like an “overstepping mediator” and demanding that it diverge from Washington to support Pyongyang’s position more strongly.
The meeting between Trump and Kim came during the US president’s visit to South Korea following meetings in Japan of the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies. Moon accompanied Trump to the border and briefly chatted with Kim, but was left out of the meeting between the US and North Korean leaders. WILDFIRES burned tracts of land in France and Spain at the weekend as Europe sweltered in record-breaking temperatures that pushed the mercury towards all-time highs yesterday in Germany, killing at least seven people.
Temperatures in France’s southern Gard region hit an all-time high of 45.9°C on Friday – hotter than in California’s Death Valley – sparking scores of fires that burned 550 hectares of land and destroyed several homes and vehicles.
One man died while competing on Saturday in a cycling race in the south-western Ariege region, in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
The 53-year-old crashed after feeling unwell, local public prosecutor Laurent Dumaine said, adding that police were investigating the precise cause of death.
The race was called off after several participants were taken sick due to the heat, organisers said.
Another cyclist died in the southern region of Vaucluse, with authorities attributing the man’s collapse to the heatwave.
Meteorologists say a weakening of the high-level jet stream is increasingly causing weather systems to stall and leading summer temperatures to soar. Five of Europe’s hottest summers in the last 500 years have happened in this century. Some 25 out of around 90 administrative departments in France have adopted limits on water use including for agriculture, which could affect harvest yields for summer crops like maize that are often irrigated.
“The heatwave has also hit the vineyards of Herault, widespread damage observed,” Jerome Despey, a wine producer in France’s south-western Herault region and head of the local chamber of agriculture said on Twitter, posting photos of shrivelled grapes.
In Spain, 40 out of 50 regions have been put under weather alert with seven of them considered to be an extreme risk, the national weather agency said.
Temperatures in Girona, in north-eastern Spain, reached 43.9 degrees on Friday – the highest ever recorded in the Catalan city.
Most of the wildfires that hit Spain in recent days were stabilised over the weekend, but firefighters were struggling to control a blaze in the central provinces of Toledo and Madrid, that has burned more than 20km² since Friday.
The World Meteorological Organisation said this week that 2019 was on track to be among the world’s hottest years on record.