Nation & World Glance

Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University — estimated 2,975 deaths.

Moon faces toughest challenge yet in 3rd summit with Kim

SEOUL, South Korea — The first inter-Korean summit of 2018, a sunny spectacle in late April, reduced war fears on the peninsula. The second, an emergency one in May, helped ensure a historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump came off.

Now, at his third summit with Kim next week in Pyongyang, South Korean President Moon Jae-in faces his toughest challenge yet: delivering something substantive that goes beyond previous vague statements on denuclearization and helps get U.S.-North Korea talks back on track.

Negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have sputtered in recent weeks, raising doubts about whether Kim is truly willing to relinquish his nuclear arsenal and putting pressure on Moon to broker progress once again.

The result will likely be a crucial indicator of how the larger nuclear negotiations with the United States will proceed. Moon will try to get Kim to express more clearly that he’s prepared to abandon his nuclear weapons, which could create momentum for a second Kim-Trump summit.

Whether Moon succeeds, fails or falls somewhere in between, the third interKorean summit could help answer a persistent question: When Kim says he supports the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” what does he actually mean?