Visits: 1
SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, will visit South Korea “in the near future,” he said on Wednesday after meeting with the South’s president, Moon Jae-in. He also agreed to dismantle missile facilities in the presence of outside inspectors, and he promised additional moves toward denuclearization if the United States takes steps of its own.
At a joint news conference with Mr. Kim in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Mr. Moon said he expected Mr. Kim to visit Seoul, the South’s capital, before the end of the year. Such a trip would be the first by any North Korean leader, another dramatic moment in a flurry of diplomacy in recent months.
Mr. Kim said he and Mr. Moon had “made a firm commitment to exert active efforts to make the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons and nuclear threat and turn it into a land of peace.”
In a joint statement the two men signed, Mr. Kim agreed to “permanently dismantle” a missile-engine test facility and a missile launchpad in Dongchang-ri, in northwestern North Korea, and to allow outside inspectors to watch that process. The Dongchang-ri complex has been a key test center for the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile program.
North Korea also promised additional steps, including the permanent dismantlement of facilities at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, if the United States takes “corresponding measures.” The North did not specify what it wanted from the Americans, but in recent weeks it has been demanding almost daily that Washington join the two Koreas in jointly declaring an end to the Korean War. Mr. Moon also advocates an end-of-war declaration.
President Trump called the North Korean commitments “very exciting” on Twitter. He also noted that the two Koreas had agreed to submit a joint bid to host the 2032 Olympics.
The big question hovering over their talks this week has been whether Mr. Kim would take steps to convince Washington that he is willing to denuclearize. American officials want to see concrete moves from the North, including freezing its nuclear activities and submitting a full list of its nuclear weapons, facilities and fissile materials. The North said nothing on Wednesday about submitting such a list.
Permanently dismantling the Yongbyon complex would be a major concession. Yongbyon is the birthplace of the North’s nuclear arms program, and successive administrations in Washington have tried but failed to get it shut it down completely, though its activities were frozen for several years under a deal reached during the Clinton administration.
The complex includes a centrifuge plant that produces highly enriched uranium for fueling nuclear bombs. It also contains the North’s only known source of plutonium, another bomb fuel: a Soviet-era nuclear reactor and a laboratory that extracts plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel.
But the North’s offer to shut Yongbyon came with strings attached. It made no specific demand of the United States in return, but it made clear it was sticking to its longstanding position that the Americans must match the North’s concessions in a “phased” denuclearization process.
And dismantling Yongbyon would not necessarily mean an end to the North’s nuclear development. Outside analysts have long suspected that North Korea has at least one other centrifuge plant that it operates in secret.
The North’s offer to let inspectors watch the dismantlement of the Dongchang-ri missile facilities also represented a step forward. In May, when the North destroyed its only known nuclear test site in Punggye-ri in the northeast, journalists were allowed to film the operation from a distance, but no nuclear experts were invited to watch. That led many to suspect that the demolition was just for show and that the site could be reopened.
Also on Wednesday, the two Koreas’ defense ministers signed an agreement aimed at easing military tensions along the countries’ border, the most heavily armed in the world. On Nov. 1, it says, no-fly zones will be established along the border and both militaries will stop carrying out artillery and other drills close to the frontier.
Both militaries will also remove some of the heavily armed guard posts they have built within the Demilitarized Zone, the 2.5-mile-wide buffer zone along the border, the agreement said.
South Korean analysts have warned that much is at stake in Mr. Moon’s efforts to mediate a breakthrough in the stalled dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang. They said that if he failed to coax Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim to hold a second summit meeting, following up on their June talks in Singapore, the Korean Peninsula might revert to the roiling tensions of last year.
When Mr. Moon’s special envoys visited Mr. Kim in Pyongyang earlier this month, he told them that he was willing to denuclearize within Mr. Trump’s first term. But he said he would start taking phased actions toward that goal only if Washington reciprocated with “simultaneous” measures to prove that it was no longer hostile, the envoys said. At the same time, the North is continuing to expand its nuclear arsenal.
As a first step, the North wants the United States to declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War. The war was halted in a truce, not formally with a peace treaty, 65 years ago, leaving the peninsula still technically at war.
Next week, Mr. Moon is expected to brief Mr. Trump during a trip to the United Nations. Then, Mr. Trump is expected to decide whether he will meet with Mr. Kim again. White House officials said last week that Mr. Kim had recently proposed a second meeting.
“If my visit helps restart North Korea-U.S. dialogue, that itself will be highly meaningful,” Mr. Moon said on Tuesday.
Mr. Kim greeted Mr. Moon at the Pyongyang airport when he arrived on Tuesday, kicking off a spectacle that stressed the ethnic affinity of the two Koreas, while giving few clues to whether he was willing to give up his nuclear weapons.
When Mr. Moon stepped off his plane, a smiling Mr. Kim was waiting on the tarmac with a military honor guard and a large crowd of Pyongyang citizens mobilized for his arrival. After the two leaders hugged each other and moved to their cars, the crowd fervently chanted “Hurrah!” and “Peace and prosperity!” while waving plastic flowers and “Korea-is-one” flags that showed an undivided Korean Peninsula.
As the motorcade carrying Mr. Moon and Mr. Kim to a state guesthouse wove through Pyongyang, huge crowds, mostly women in bright flowing dresses, lined the boulevard, waving pink flowers and chanting for reunification.
Tuesday’s crowds were clearly mobilized to show the North Koreans’ adoration for Mr. Kim and their support for his uriminzokkiri, or “among our nation,” policy of stressing inter-Korean cooperation while the North engages in a nuclear standoff with the Americans.
On Tuesday morning, North Korea’s state news media told its people of Mr. Moon’s planned visit, saying it would “offer an important opportunity in further accelerating the development of inter-Korean relations that is making a new history.” It did not make any reference to its nuclear weapons program.