As it was reported earlier, Moon Jae-in, the President of South Korea, and Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, are to conduct talks on April 27 in Panmunjom, a village located on the border between the states.
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He stopped short of offering to give up his nuclear weapons or scrap any warheads he may have stockpiled.
Still, the shares of South Korean companies with business links to North Korea rallied after Pyongyang’s weekend announcement.
This brought the United States back to the negotiating table with the North, and six-party talks also involving South Korea, China, Japan and Russian Federation began in Beijing in August 2003. Vipin Narang, a scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, translated the meaning of the statement as: “This is what we will look like as a nuclear weapons power”.
Central to these quick diplomatic developments is the worldwide community’s desire to see North Korea agree to a program of denuclearization; this past Friday, the country announced it would cease its testing program, though experts are taking the news with a grain of salt. As much as Trump’s threats of military force, his playground goading of Kim as “Little Rocket Man”, and his pressure on China to increase and enforce United Nations sanctions may have pressured Kim, it’s as easy to argue that Kim forced Trump to the negotiating table with relentless testing that proved he can threaten the USA with a nuclear warhead.
While South Korean and USA officials have said Kim is likely trying to save his broken economy from heavy sanctions, some analysts see him as entering the negotiations from a position of strength after having declared his nuclear force as complete in November.
Mr Kim is making a shrewd public relations move, seen by many as trying to ease global tensions while at the same time going into negotiations in a strong position of still having China’s support.
North Korea argues that it needs its nukes because of the USA military presence in South Korea and annual U.S.
Such an outcome – a reversal of 70 years of history – remains a long shot, amid doubts about whether the North would agree to relinquish its arsenal of nuclear weapons. But this is hardly a guarantee that the planned summit will prove anything of value.
Trade sanctions have hit North Korean people hard but have hardly dented the wealth of Mr Kim and his elite colleagues. CIA Director Mike Pompeo has journeyed to Pyongyang to meet with Kim. “His meeting with Kim is a stepping stone for Trump to walk on”. Pompeo made a secret trip to meet with Kim and discuss the summit in recent weeks.
China’s foreign ministry says a large number of Chinese tourists have been killed and injured in a “major traffic accident” in North Korea. “We believe that the coming weeks and months will be critical in terms of laying the groundwork for the denuclearization of North Korea”, he said.
“It must be attributed to multiple factors, one of which is that Pyongyang has mastered certain advanced nuclear technologies and successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of more than 10,000 km”. The theory was, the country would save itself by surrendering to United States demands, including nuclear disarmament, for relief from economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
The ministry described the four North Koreans killed as “workers”.
Group of Seven foreign ministers pledged Monday to maintain “maximum pressure” on North Korea to compel it to give up its nuclear and missile programs, determining that Pyongyang’s decision to suspend nuclear tests and long-range missile launches is not sufficient to meet the demands of the worldwide community.
He said the two upcoming summits are a “huge gamble” for all three leaders if they don’t produce a breakthrough. Trump would be seen as being duped.
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The only oil products sent to North Korea was 3 tonnes of jet fuel and 55 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
