North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (L) and South Korea's President Moon
Jae-in shaking hands at the Military Demarcation Line that divides their
countries at Panmunjom on on April 27, 2018. AFP PHOTO | KBS
The leaders of North and South Korea agreed Friday to pursue a
permanent peace and the complete denuclearisation of the divided
peninsula, as they embraced after a historic summit laden with
symbolism.
In a day of bonhomie including a highly
symbolic handshake over the Military Demarcation Line that divides the
two countries, the pair issued a declaration on "the common goal of
realising, through complete denuclearisation, a nuclear-free Korean
peninsula".
Upon signing the document, the two leaders
shared a warm embrace, the culmination of a summit filled with smiles
and displays of friendship in front of the world's media.
They
also agreed that they would this year seek a permanent end to the
Korean War, 65 years after the hostilities ended in an armistice rather
than a peace treaty.
Panmunjom Declaration
Moon
would visit Pyongyang in "the fall", the two leaders said, also
agreeing to hold "regular meetings and direct telephone conversations".
The so-called Panmunjom Declaration capped an extraordinary day
unthinkable only months ago, as the nuclear-armed North carried out a
series of missile launches and its sixth atomic blast.
Kim
said he was "filled with emotion" after stepping over the concrete
blocks into the South, making him the first North Korean leader to set
foot there since the shooting stopped in the Korean War.
At
Kim's impromptu invitation the two men briefly crossed hand-in-hand
into the North before walking to the Peace House building on the
southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom for the summit — only
the third of its kind since hostilities ceased in 1953.
"I came here determined to send a starting signal at the threshold of a new history," said Kim.
After
the summit, he pledged that the two Koreas will ensure they did not
"repeat the unfortunate history in which past inter-Korea agreements...
fizzled out after beginning".
The two previous Korean
summits in 2000 and 2007, both of them in Pyongyang, also ended with
displays of affection and similar pledges, but the agreements ultimately
came to naught.
With the North's atomic arsenal high
on the agenda, South Korean President Moon Jae-in responded that the
North's announced moratorium on nuclear testing and long-range missile
launches was "very significant."
It was the
highest-level encounter yet in a whirlwind of nuclear diplomacy, and
intended to pave the way for a much-anticipated encounter between Kim
and US President Donald Trump.
Olympic ice-breaker
Last
year Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear blast, by far its most
powerful to date, and launched missiles capable of reaching the US
mainland.
Its actions sent tensions soaring as Kim and Trump traded personal insults and threats of war.
Moon
seized on the South's Winter Olympics as an opportunity to broker
dialogue between them, and has said his meeting with Kim will serve to
set up the summit between Pyongyang and Washington.
The
White House said it hoped the summit would "achieve progress toward a
future of peace and prosperity for the entire Korean Peninsula".
Trump
has demanded the North give up its weapons, and Washington is pressing
for it to do so in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way.
Seoul
had played down expectations before the summit, saying the North's
technological advances in its nuclear and missile programmes made the
summit "all the more difficult".
Pyongyang is demanding as yet unspecified security guarantees to discuss its arsenal.
When
Kim visited the North's key backer Beijing last month in only his first
foreign trip as leader, China's state media cited him as saying that
the issue could be resolved, as long as Seoul and Washington take
"progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace".
In
the past, North Korean support for denuclearisation of the "Korean
peninsula" has been code for the removal of US troops from the South and
the end of its nuclear umbrella over its security ally — prospects
unthinkable in Washington.
Moon said he hoped they
would have further meetings on both sides of the border, and Kim offered
to visit Seoul "any time" he was invited.
After a
morning session lasting an hour and 40 minutes, Kim crossed back to the
North for lunch, a dozen security guards jogging alongside his
limousine.
Before the afternoon session, Moon and Kim held a symbolic tree planting ceremony on the demarcation line.
The soil came from Mount Paektu, on the North's border with China, and Mount Halla, on the South's southern island of Jeju.
After signing the agreement the leaders and their wives attended a banquet before Kim was to return to the North.
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