Kim hints at denuclearisation and will visit South in 'near future'

Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, will visit South Korea “in the near future,” he said Wednesday after meeting with the South’s president, Moon Jae-in.

At a joint news conference with Kim in North Korea, Moon said he expected Kim to visit Seoul, the South’s capital, before the end of the year. Such a trip would be the first by any North Korean leader, another dramatic moment in the flurry of diplomacy around the North’s nuclear weapons program in recent months.

Kim also agreed to “permanently dismantle” a missile-engine test facility and a missile launchpad in Dongchang-ri, in northwestern North Korea, and to allow outside inspectors to watch that process, according to a joint statement that he and Moon both signed. The Dongchang-ri complex has been a key test centre for the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile program.

North Korea also promised to take additional steps, including the permanent dismantlement of facilities at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, if the United States takes “corresponding measures,” the statement said. The North has been demanding that Washington join the two Koreas in making a joint declaration ending the Korean War.

The two Korean leaders’ summit meeting in Pyongyang was their third, and it was Moon’s first visit to Pyongyang as South Korea’s leader. The two had met on the inter-Korean border in April and May.

The big question hovering over their talks this week has been whether Kim would agree to take steps to convince Washington that he is willing to denuclearise. US officials want to see concrete steps from the North, including submitting a full list of its nuclear weapons and facilities and fissile materials, and freezing of its nuclear activities.

President Donald Trump called the North Korean commitments “very exciting” on Twitter. He also noted that the two Koreas had agreed to submit a joint bid to host the 2032 Olympics.

At the news conference in Pyongyang, Kim said he and Moon had “made a firm commitment to exert active efforts to make the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons and nuclear threat and turn it into a land of peace.”

Kim has previously committed to working toward denuclearisation, in joint statements with both Moon and Trump. His remarks in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, represented the first time he had made such a commitment verbally before an international audience. The news conference was broadcast live.

Soon after Moon arrived in North Korea on Tuesday, Kim expressed optimism about the future of the negotiations, thanking his counterpart for helping bring about his June summit meeting with Trump in Singapore.

“Thanks to that meeting, the situation around the Korean Peninsula has stabilised, and we can now expect more progress,” Kim said at the start of a two-hour meeting with Moon at the headquarters of the ruling Workers’ Party, according to pool reports from South Korean journalists in Pyongyang.

South Korean analysts warned that much was at stake in Moon’s efforts to mediate a breakthrough in the stalled dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang. If he failed to coax Trump and Kim to hold a second summit meeting, they said, the Korean Peninsula might revert to the roiling tensions that put the region on the brink of war last year.

When Moon’s special envoys visited Kim in Pyongyang earlier this month, he told them that he was willing to denuclearise within Trump’s first term. But he said he would start taking phased actions toward that goal only if Washington reciprocated with “simultaneous” measures to prove that it was no longer hostile, the envoys said. At the same time, the North is continuing to expand its nuclear arsenal.

As a first step, the North wants the United States to declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War. The war was halted in a truce, not formally with a peace treaty, 65 years ago, leaving the peninsula still technically at war.

Next week, Moon is expected to brief Trump during a trip to the United Nations. Then, Trump is expected to decide whether he will meet with Kim again. White House officials said last week that Kim had recently proposed a second meeting.

“If my visit helps restart North Korea-US dialogue, that itself will be highly meaningful,” Moon said Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, Kim greeted Moon at the Pyongyang airport with a spectacle.

When Moon stepped off his plane, a smiling Kim was waiting on the tarmac with a military honour guard and a large crowd of citizens mobilised for his arrival. After the leaders hugged each other and moved to their cars, the crowd fervently chanted “Hurrah!” and “Peace and prosperity!” while waving plastic flowers and “Korea-is-one” flags that showed an undivided Korean Peninsula.

As the motorcade carrying Moon and Kim to a state guesthouse wove through Pyongyang, huge crowds, mostly women clad in bright flowing dresses, lined the boulevard, waving pink flowers and chanting for reunification.

Over the years, the North’s propaganda toward the South has mostly focused on ridiculing it as an “American running dog.” But when it seeks warmer ties with the South, it also stresses the ethnic affinity of the two nations.

Tuesday’s crowds were clearly mobilised to demonstrate the North Koreans’ adoration for Kim and their support for his uriminzokkiri, or “among our nation,” policy of stressing inter-Korean cooperation while the North engages in a nuclear standoff with the Americans.

The highly choreographed crowds remain a regular phenomenon in North Korea, where the state routinely mobilises the populace as a way of keeping them loyal and disciplined, analysts say.

The motorcade passed major landmarks of Pyongyang: the Tower of Eternal Life, which honours Kim’s grandfather and father, who ruled before him; Ryomyong Street, lined with pastel-coloured skyscrapers built as Kim’s signature project; and the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the Kims lie in state inside glass boxes.

Showing Moon and his wife, Kim Jung-sook, to their suite in the state guesthouse, Kim sounded apologetic about the state of the North’s economy, as he has before with Moon. “This is shabby, compared to what we can find in developed countries,” he said.

On Tuesday morning, North Korea’s state media told its people of Moon’s planned visit, saying it would “offer an important opportunity in further accelerating the development of inter-Korean relations that is making a new history.” It did not make any reference to its nuclear weapons program.

@2018 New York Times News Service