The two Koreas today set a date for a rare inter-Korean summit, following a high-level meeting that was held days after the nuclear-armed North\u2019s leader Kim Jong-Un made his international debut with a surprise trip to China.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the will of both leaders, the South and North agreed to hold the \u20182018 South-North summit\u2019 on April 27 at the South\u2019s Peace House in Panmunjom,\u201d said a joint press statement, read out in turn by both delegations\u2019 leaders.<\/p>\n
The meeting between Kim Jong Un, leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, and the South\u2019s President Moon Jae-in will be only the third of its kind, and will be followed by landmark talks with US President Donald Trump which could come as early as May.<\/p>\n
The venue will make Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the end of the Korean War\u2014although according to Pyongyang\u2019s official accounts, during the conflict his grandfather and predecessor Kim Il Sung went several times to Seoul, which twice fell to his forces.<\/p>\n
Another round of working-level talks next Wednesday will discuss issues including protocol and security.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s meeting was held in the Unification Pavilion on Panmunjom\u2019s northern side, where the leader of Pyongyang\u2019s delegation Ri Son Gwon said: \u201cOver the past 80 days or so, many events that were unprecedented in inter-Korean relations took place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next month\u2019s meeting comes after previous inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007, since when the North has made extensive progress in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.<\/p>\n
It has been subjected to multiple rounds of sanctions by the UN Security Council, US, South and others as a result, and tensions in the region have soared, with Kim and Trump engaging in a fiery war of words last year.<\/p>\n
But a rapid rapprochement on the peninsula was kicked off by the Winter Olympics in the South and events have moved quickly since then, with a flurry of official visits between the two Koreas.<\/p>\n
An advance team of Southern performers headed north on Thursday ahead of K-pop concerts in Pyongyang.<\/p>\n
Also today, China\u2019s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, was due to travel to Seoul to brief Moon on Kim\u2019s secretive visit to Beijing this week to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time.<\/p>\n
It was the North Korean leader\u2019s first overseas trip since inheriting power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in 2011.<\/p>\n
China has long been the North\u2019s key diplomatic defender and provider of trade and aid, but relations have been strained by Pyongyang\u2019s weapons programmes, with Beijing showing a new willingness to implement UN sanctions against it.<\/p>\n
Even so the two leaders hailed their nations\u2019 historic ties, with Xi accepting Kim\u2019s invitation to visit Pyongyang, according to the North\u2019s official Korean Central News Agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no question that my first foreign visit would be to the Chinese capital,\u201d it quoted Kim as saying, calling it a \u201cnoble obligation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kim pledged that he was \u201ccommitted to denuclearisation\u201d on the Korean peninsula, according to China\u2019s Xinhua news agency\u2014but added this would depend on South Korea and the US taking what he called \u201cprogressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace\u201d.<\/p>\n
Analysts say both sides had reason to hold the meeting\u2014Pyongyang to secure Beijing\u2019s backing and support, and China to protect its interests in what it considers its backyard.<\/p>\n
Robert Kelly, a professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, said: \u201cXi would not grant this meeting unless the Chinese were genuinely concerned about the summits to come and wanted some kind of role to play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The two Koreas today set a date for a rare inter-Korean summit, following a high-level meeting that was held days after the nuclear-armed North\u2019s leader Kim Jong-Un made his international debut with a surprise trip to China. \u201cAccording to the will of both leaders, the South and North agreed to hold the \u20182018 South-North summit\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26301,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26299\/revisions\/26301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}