(Eagle News) — It all started with a tweet by US President Donald Trump inviting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to an impromptu meeting at the Demilitarized Zone.
Trump’s invitation on Twitter from the G20 summit in Osaka, read: “if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”
He later said he would have “no problem” stepping into the North with Kim — in what would be a dramatic gesture re-enacting an extraordinary 2018 scene when the young leader invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to walk over the Military Demarcation Line that forms the border between the Koreas.
“Sure I would, I would. I’d feel very comfortable doing that. I’d have no problem,” Trump told reporters.
The US leader said the invitation was spontaneous, but it comes amid a recent flurry of diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear programme after a Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed without an agreement.
And when the two leaders finally met on June 30, Trump invited Kim to the White House “anytime he wants to do it”.
“It’s a great day for the world and it’s an honor for me to be here,” Trump said. “A lot of great things are happening.”
For his part, Kim said, “I am convinced our relationship will enable us to overcome barriers standing in the way.”
He said their close ties enabled a meeting to happen “just overnight” at the DMZ.
The two leaders also sat down for discussions. Kim said their “handshake of peace” in a location that was “the symbol of the division of north and south” showed that “we are willing to put the past behind us.”
This was the first time for a sitting US President to step in North Korean soil, walking over the Military Demarcation Line, as the border is officially known.
What originally was intended to be an impromptu exchange of pleasantries turned into a 50-minute meeting, another historic first in the year-long rapprochement between the two technically warring nations. It marks a return to face-to-face contact between the leaders after talks broke down during a summit in Vietnam in February. Trump announced afterward that the two nations had agreed to resume discussions in the coming weeks. Significant doubts remain, though, about the future of the negotiations and the North’s willingness to give up its stockpile of nuclear weapons.
In a made-for television moment, the two leaders strode toward one another from opposite sides of the Joint Security Area and shook hands over the raised patch of concrete at the Military Demarcation Line as cameras clicked and photographers jostled to capture the scene. After asking if Kim wanted him to cross, Trump took 10 steps into the North with Kim at his side, before escorting Kim back to the South for a sit-down at Freedom House.
Trump’s entry onto North Korean soil — which he said was uncertain until the last moment — is an extraordinary sequel to the scene at Kim’s first summit with Moon last year, when the young leader invited the South Korean to walk over the Military Demarcation Line, as the border is officially known.
Moon seized on last year’s Winter Olympics to broker the process between Pyongyang and Washington, after tensions soared in 2017 as the North carried out multiple missile launches and its biggest nuclear test to date, while Trump and Kim traded mutual insults and threats of war.
The significance of the meeting in the no-man’s-land often referred to as the world’s last Cold War frontier was “obvious”, said Stimson Centre Asia analyst David Kim.
“It’s historic for Trump to be the first US President enter North Korea soil, historic for Moon to meet, albeit briefly, with both leaders.”
(with reports and photos from Agence France-Presse and Associated Press)
