Kim ready to accept nuke moratorium for US talks

Donald Trump has cautiously welcomed Kim Jong-un’s move to hold a landmark summit and impose a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.

South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong, left, shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their Pyongyang meeting yesterday.

Donald Trump has cautiously welcomed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s move to hold a landmark summit meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month and impose a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.

While Mr Kim qualified his statements by saying the moratorium would only happen if his country holds talks with the US, the American president said the statements were “very positive,” and that progress was being made.

South Korea’s presidential national security director Chung Eui-yong said the two Koreas agreed to hold their third-ever summit at a tense border village in late April.

He also said the leaders will establish a “hotline” communication channel to lower military tensions, and would speak together before the summit.

Mr Trump tweeted: “Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting!”

Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. 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 U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2018

Mr Chung led a 10-member South Korean delegation that met with Kim during a two-day visit to Pyongyang. They returned today.

The agreements follow a flurry of co-operative steps taken by the Koreas during last month’s PyeongChang Olympics in South Korea.

Tensions had run high during the previous year because of a barrage of North Korean weapons tests. The two past summits, in 2000 and 2007, were held between Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-il, and two liberal South Korean presidents. They resulted in a series of cooperative projects between the Koreas that were scuttled during subsequent conservative administrations in South Korea.

Mr Chung said tonight North Korea agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests for as long as it holds talks with the US.

North Korea also made it clear that it would not need to keep its nuclear weapons if military threats against it are removed and it receives a credible security guarantee, he said.

The delegation from Seoul is the most senior to travel to the North for more than a decade.

The North’s official news agency KCNA said Kim “warmly welcomed” the South Korean officials, who handed over a letter from Mr Moon.

“Hearing the intention of President Moon Jae-in for a summit from the special envoy of the south side, he exchanged views and made a satisfactory agreement,” KCNA added.

Kim’s talks with the South Koreans lasted more than four hours, and included dinner at the North’s ruling Workers Party headquarters in Pyongyang, according to the Blue House.

The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers Party, devoted its front page yesterday to the visit under the headline “Comrade Kim Jong-un receives special envoys from the south’s President”.

The main picture showed Kim with the five South Korean officials in the delegation, and it carried seven other front-page images of the talks — at which Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong sat to his left — with more coverage inside.

The Seoul delegation’s visit comes after the North’s leader sent his sister to the Winter Olympic Games in the South and invited Mr Moon to a summit in Pyongyang.

Kim Yo-jong’s trip was the first visit to the South by a member of the North’s dynasty since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, and her appearance at the Games opening ceremony — where athletes from the two Koreas marched together — made global headlines. At the time Mr Moon did not immediately accept the invitation to Pyongyang, saying the “right conditions” were needed.

Mr Moon had sought to use the PyeongChang Games to open dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang in hopes of easing a nuclear standoff that has heightened fears over global security.

But while Pyongyang has long said it was willing to talk to the US without preconditions, it had refused to give up the “treasured sword” — nuclear weapons. Washington has insisted the North must take concrete steps towards denuclearisation before negotiations can take place.

Donald Trump dubbed Kim “Little Rocket Man” and boasted about the size of his nuclear button, while the North Korean leader called the US President a “mentally deranged US dotard”.

They traded threats of war and sent tensions soaring before a thaw in the run-up to the Olympics, which were attended by athletes, cheerleaders and officials from the North, and the two Koreas fielded a unified women’s ice hockey team.

AP, AFP