Will dump nukes for security surety: Kim
SEOUL — North and South Korea have agreed to hold a summit at their heavily armed border next month, with Pyongyang saying it would consider abandoning nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees, Seoul said on Tuesday.
If confirmed by Pyongyang, the offer would mark the first time under the current leadership the North had declared itself willing to discuss conditions under which it might consider giving up its nuclear arsenal — a move it has previously insisted was firmly not negotiable.
Following a meeting in Pyongyang with leader Kim Jong-un, Chung Eui-yong, the national security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said the North had stated there was “no reason” to hold on to its nuclear weapons “if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed”.
Chung said Kim and Moon would meet in late April at the fortified border village of Panmunjom for what would be only the third inter-Korean summit since the end of the 1950-53 Korean conflict.
He said the two sides would establish a leader-to-leader hotline, offering the highest-level contact between two nations that are technically still at war.
US President Donald Trump hailed “possible progress” on the North Korea nuclear impasse on Tuesday. “Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea,” Trump tweeted in his first response to the overture. “For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned.”—
The world is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the US is ready to go hard in either direction! Donald Trump @realdonaldtrump
seoul — The leaders of North and South Korea will hold a historic summit in the Demilitarised Zone next month after Pyongyang expressed willingness to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees, Seoul said.
The North is open to “frank” talks with the United States on denuclearisation and would suspend missile and nuclear tests while dialogue was under way, the South’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said after returning from a meeting in Pyongyang with leader Kim Jong-un.
North Korea is subject to multiple rounds of UN Security Council sanctions over its atomic and ballistic missile programmes, and has long insisted that its “treasured sword” is not up for negotiation.
But it is willing to abandon the programmes if its national security — and that of its leadership — is guaranteed, Chung said.
That remains a high threshold — Pyongyang has considered itself at risk of invasion by the United States since the Korean War ended in a ceasefire in 1953, leaving the two sides technically still at war.
But, Chung said, Kim is willing to discuss denuclearisation in talks with Washington — which could be the crucial concession needed to enable a dialogue to happen.
Tuesday’s developments are the latest steps in a rapid Olympics-driven rapprochement on the peninsula. They follow a year of high tensions during which Pyongyang carried out its most powerful nuclear test to date, along with multiple missile launches, including rockets capable of reaching the US mainland.
Kim and US President Donald Trump traded personal insults and threats of war, sending fears of conflict spiralling.
But the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in the South triggered an apparent transformation, with Kim sending his sister to the opening ceremony and sparking a flurry of cross-border trips as South Korean President Moon Jae-in tries to broker talks between Pyongyang and Washington.