[The warmth of the meeting and the positive
images beamed onto TV screens across the globe have set the stage for Kim to
meet with Trump at the end of May or in early June. Trump has said he will go
to the talks only if they promise to be “fruitful,” a bar that probably was met
with Friday’s meetings.]
By Anna Fifield
 |
|
South
Korean President Moon Jae-in met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
on
April 27. Here are key moments from the historic talks.
(Sarah
Parnass, Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)
|
In an astonishing turn of events, a beaming
Kim on Friday stepped across the border into South Korea for a day of talks
that began and ended with him holding hands with the president of the South,
Moon Jae-in.
They talked, they joked, they walked, they
ate, and when they signed a joint statement pledging to work toward their
“common goal” of denuclearizing their peninsula, they hugged.
“Today we saw Kim Jong Un’s charm offensive
in action,” said Duyeon Kim, a visiting fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future
Forum in Seoul. “He’s exerting his influence and trying to grab the spotlight
with a big smile. But behind that smile, he was wearing his game face.”
Indeed, with Friday’s historic summit and the
bold, if vague, pledge to discuss giving up his nuclear program, Kim is trying
to rewrite the public narrative about him and ease some of the outside pressure
on him.
“Good things are happening, but only time
will tell!” Trump, who has championed a “maximum pressure” campaign against
Kim, tweeted early Friday morning in Washington.
The warmth of the meeting and the positive
images beamed onto TV screens across the globe have set the stage for Kim to
meet with Trump at the end of May or in early June. Trump has said he will go
to the talks only if they promise to be “fruitful,” a bar that probably was met
with Friday’s meetings.
Kim and Moon on Friday signed a three-page
“Panmunjom Declaration,” named after the truce village in the demilitarized
zone between the two Koreas where it was forged, stating that “South and North
Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete
denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”
The two Koreas agreed “to actively seek the
support and cooperation of the international community” in that endeavor, it
said.
But the agreement was short on details, and
the phrase “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” will ring alarm bells in
Washington because it implies that nuclear weapons will not be allowed in South
Korea, either.
The United States, South Korea’s security
ally, regularly sends nuclear-capable aircraft and ships to the South during
military exercises, so this clause will raise suspicions that Pyongyang is
calling for a significant change in the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
Moon previously had said that Kim would not
insist on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South, and there was no
mention of this in Friday’s agreement.
Kim did not mention the word
“denuclearization” when he appeared before the press after signing the
agreement, although he stayed on message throughout.
“We will work to make sure that the agreement
bears good results by closely communicating to ensure that the failure to
implement North-South agreements in the past will not be repeated,” Kim said,
standing in front of cameras.
Previous inter-Korean agreements also have
pledged denuclearization, and there is significant skepticism in Washington and
Tokyo, in particular, about whether this time will be any different.
Surprising scope
That Kim signed his name to a statement that
even included the word “denuclearization” marked significant progress after a
year of threats and missile launches that brought the specter of war back to
the Korean Peninsula.
And Friday’s agreement marks a significant
change from Kim’s previous statements that he would continue to expand his
nuclear arsenal, said Patrick McEachern, a fellow at the Wilson Center in
Washington.
Instead, the two leaders established a
framework for plausible resolution of the most pressing issues on the
peninsula, he said.
“This is a great start and should be cause
for cautious optimism,” said McEachern, who worked on North Korea in the State
Department. “The public conversation should now shift from speculation on
whether North Korea would consider denuclearization to how South Korea and the
United States can advance this denuclearization pledge in concrete steps.”
Even the most optimistic analysts were
surprised at the scope of the agreement.
“You can’t ask for more than that,” said John
Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul
and a keen proponent of engagement.
“Yes, there are still questions about how to
guarantee North Korea’s security on the path to denuclearization. But I’m
surprised they would go this far at this early stage, that Kim Jong Un didn’t
save this for his meeting with Trump,” Delury added.
Kim and Moon also agreed to work to turn the
armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty that
would officially bring the war to a close.
“South and North Korea will actively
cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean
Peninsula,” the joint statement said in English, as officially translated by
the South’s presidential Blue House.
The Korean-language version used the words
“peace treaty” — an important distinction. “Treaty” generally refers to a piece
of paper, while “regime” means a system for peace, such as stopping military
activities.
“Bringing an end to the current unnatural
state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean
Peninsula is a historical mission that must not be delayed any further,” the
statement said.
The United States signed the armistice
agreement 65 years ago on behalf of the South Korean side, and shortly after
Friday’s announcement, Trump tweeted, “KOREAN WAR TO END!”
The two sides also plan to set up an
inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, a city just inside the northern side of
the border, and Moon said he would visit Pyongyang this fall. Kim said he would
happily travel to Seoul if invited.
'Symbol of peace'
The signing ceremony came at the end of an
extraordinary day full of words and gestures that would have been unimaginable
at the beginning of the year.
At 9:30 a.m. Friday, Kim came out of the main
building on the northern side of the military demarcation line that has divided
the Korean Peninsula for 65 years and walked right up to the line.
Moon was waiting there for him, hand
outstretched, and Kim became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South
Korea.
“When you crossed the military border for the
first time, Panmunjom became a symbol of peace, not a symbol of division,” Moon
later said to Kim.
Showing his penchant for bold and surprising
moves, Kim then asked Moon to step back across the line with him, and he did.
For a brief moment, the leaders stood in North Korean territory, holding hands.
The moment was broadcast live across the
country, with commuters standing in train stations and teachers stopping
classes so their students could watch the moment.
Moon and Kim spent hours together on Friday,
in formal talks and in a half-hour private discussion on park benches outside
in the sun, surrounded by birdsong. They threw soil and water from both Koreas
onto a pine tree planted in the demilitarized zone to mark the occasion.
At one stage during the day, Kim assured Moon
he would not have to wake up early anymore — a reference to the fact that North
Korea’s missile launches usually happened at about dawn — and he even referred
to the North Koreans who have escaped to the South. He acknowledged that the
North’s infrastructure network is far inferior to the South’s.
As part of his charm offensive, Kim appealed
to Moon as a fellow Korean, highlighting their shared culture and framing their
problems as ones that only they, as Koreans, could solve.
Then, after a dinner full of symbolism,
including noodles from Pyongyang and fish brought in from Moon’s home town,
they sat together in the DMZ to watch a show of lights and music. This
culminated with the two Korean leaders standing hand in hand, watching as
photos of them from throughout the day were beamed onto the building from which
the South usually keeps a watchful eye on the North.
The outcome was as good as Kim could have
hoped for, said Christopher Green, senior adviser for the Korean Peninsula at
the International Crisis Group.
“For a tyrant ruling 25 million people in a
corner of East Asia, this is a big deal,” he said.
Min Joo Kim contributed to this report.
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