North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s limousine was spotted surrounded by jogging security guards as he left for lunch after the first round of talks at the inter-Korean summit.
He was in Seoul, South Korea, to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in for “sincere, candid” talks on denuclearisation, according to media reports.
Moon said that he would visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in the fall.
They met in the border village of Panmunjom.
President Donald Trump tweeted that only “time will tell” if it leads to the end of nuclear and missile testing.
“The United States, and all of its GREAT people, should be very proud of what is now taking place,” he wrote.
“I don’t think he’s playing,” said Trump of Kim, while adding that his presidential predecessors handled the North Korean threat poorly.
“The United States has been played beautifully, like a fiddle, because you had a different kind of a leader,” Trump said, according to the Times. “We’re not going to be played, OK? We’re going to hopefully make a deal; if we don’t, that’s fine.”
But even as the Koreas agreed on a common goal of a “nuclear-free” peninsula, they stopped short of spelling out exactly what that meant or how it might come about.
The Trump administration defines “denuclearization” as Kim giving up his nuclear weapons, something he has been unwilling to do. North Korea has historically demanded the United States withdraw its troops and remove its “nuclear umbrella” of support for the South.
The declaration by Kim and Moon “is breathtaking in its scope and ambition,” David Albright, who is the head of of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, told the Times via email. “But how to achieve all the goals laid out in the document, given the current situation?”
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