North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet his South Korean counterpart President Moon Jae-in at a border village on April 27, Seoul announced on Thursday.
This came after the two nations agreed on a rare summit that could prove significant in global efforts to resolve a decades-long standoff over the North’s nuclear programme.
The announcement was made after officials met at the border village of Panmunjom. The Koreas plan to hold another preparatory meeting on April 4 to discuss protocol, security and media coverage issues, according to a joint statement released by the two countries.
The rapid rapprochement was kicked off by the Winter Olympics in the South and comes after a year of heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes, which saw Kim and US President Donald Trump engaged in a war of words.
Events have since moved rapidly, with a flurry of official visits between the two Koreas before Kim went to Beijing this week to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time.
Panmunjom meeting
The delegations from the two Koreas met at the Unification Pavilion building on the northern side of the border truce of village of Panmunjom on Thursday to discuss the exact date and agenda of next month’s summit.
Separately, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi met South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong on Thursday to discuss the recent North Korean-Chinese summit in Beijing.
Yang is scheduled to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday.
The Kim Jong-un’s visit to Beijing was his first overseas trip since inheriting power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011.
China has long been the DPRK’s key diplomatic defender and provider of trade and aid, but relations have been strained by Pyongyang’s weapons programmes, with Beijing showing a new willingness to implement UN sanctions against it.
Historic relations hailed
Even so, the two leaders hailed their nations’ historic relations, with Xi accepting Kim’s invitation to Pyongyang according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“There is no question that my first foreign visit would be to the Chinese capital,” it quoted him as saying, calling it a “noble obligation.”
Kim pledged that he was “committed to denuclearisation” on the Korean peninsula, according to China’s Xinhua news agency – but added that it was dependent on South Korea and the US taking what he called “progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace.”
Bilateral summit with Japan
Japan has sounded out the North Korean government about a bilateral summit, and Pyongyang has discussed the possibility of a leaders’ meeting with Japan and other countries, Japan’s Asahi newspaper said on Thursday.
The government of Kim Jong-un has informed leaders of North Korea’s ruling Korean Workers Party of the possibility of summits with Japan, Russia and other countries, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified North Korean source and briefing papers.
“The Japanese government has expressed a wish to host a leaders meeting, via the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan,” or Chongryong, Pyongyang’s de facto embassy in Japan, the Asahi quoted the briefing papers as saying.
A Japanese government source told Reuters in mid-March that Japan was considering seeking a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Kim to discuss Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents decades ago.
The Asahi said in an article from Seoul Kim’s government had discussed the possibility of summits with South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, in that order.