A week after meeting with US President Donald Trump in Singapore, Korean leader Kim Jong Un has embarked upon a two day journey to Beijing to talk about how to deal with Trump as well as diplomacy between North Korea and China. The talks are expected to bring China to a deeper positioning in the peace and denuclearization process on the Korean peninsula. Kim’s third visit to China is to come to a close later today. Thus far, agreements between the two Asian nations are coming along according to schedule, and relations between them are on rise.
The South China Morning Post reports:
North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping came to an understanding on issues that are being discussed at a summit between the two leaders, including denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, the North’s state media said on Wednesday.
Kim and Xi assessed the historic meeting Kim had with US President Donald Trump in Singapore last week and exchanged opinions on ways to resolve the issue of denuclearisation, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
The North Korean leader also promised during a meeting with Xi in Beijing to cooperate with Chinese officials to secure “true peace” in the process of “opening a new future” on the Korean peninsula, it said.
Kim’s two-day visit to Beijing will end later on Wednesday, according to state media from China and North Korea. It follows his Singapore summit, where Kim and Trump reaffirmed a commitment to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula
Trump surprised officials in South Korea and the United States after that meeting by saying he would end “provocative” joint US-South Korean military exercises.
The United States and South Korea said on Tuesday they had agreed to suspend a joint military exercise scheduled for August, although decisions regarding subsequent drills have not yet been made.
Kim is on his third visit to China this year. Xi offered high praise to the North Korean leader on Tuesday for the “positive outcome” of last week’s summit.
KCNA also reported that Xi said relations between China and North Korea had entered a new level of development since Kim’s first visit in March and that the agreements made between the two leaders were being carried out “one-by-one”.
Kim also told Xi he was willing to bolster the bilateral friendship and cooperation, it said.
It was expected that Kim would visit Beijing to brief Xi on his summit with Trump, which included Pyongyang agreeing to hand over the remains of troops missing from the 1950-53 Korean War.
Two US officials told Reuters on Tuesday North Korea could start that process within the next few days.
The Kim-Trump meeting was deemed ‘impressive’ in its results by the South Korean president, Moon Jae In, as he remarked to Russian media leading up to his state visit to Moscow on Thursday.
TASS reports:
SEOUL, June 20. /TASS/. The results of the US-North Korea summit in Singapore earlier this month have surpassed all expectations, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said ahead of his state visit to Russia beginning on Thursday.
“The results of the summit turned out to be impressive,” the South Korean leader said in his exclusive interview to TASS First Deputy Director-General Mikhail Gusman for TASS, government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta and the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
“The North Korean-US standoff has lasted for 70 years. Now it’s the time for those two nations to renounce hostility. A new historic moment, when we can establish the system of solid peace in the region, opens before us,” he said, adding that the results of the summit have surpassed all expectations.
According to the South Korean leader, Pyongyang and Washington should now immediately fulfill these agreements. “Now talks are underway at a working level between the South and the North, between South Korea and the United states, and measures on implementing these agreements are being drawn up. After the summit the North said it was ready for full denuclearization, and the US confirmed its readiness to provide security guarantees for Pyongyang,” he noted.
“The North and the South stopped broadcasting propaganda on the border, South Korea and the US temporarily put off joint military drills, and now a peace process is underway. Such peaceful steps may lay the foundation to further bolster dialogue between the parties concerned,” the president stressed.
“I call all the parties concerned to implement these measures as soon as possible. North Korea should take certain steps, and the US should provide comprehensive security guarantees,” he said.
The historic meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump took place at the Capella Hotel on Singapore’s Sentosa Island on June 12. The parties signed a joint document, in which Pyongyang made a commitment to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula in return for US security guarantees. Trump pledged to meet Pyongyang’s demand to halt joint military drills with South Korea.
The US leader noted that he had not discussed with Kim Jong-un the issue of sending US troops to South Korea, where some 28,500 US forces have been deployed.
The resolve for denuclearization
At the inter-Korean summit in late April North Korean leader Kim Jong-un showed the resolve for denuclearization and the readiness to give up the nuclear program provided that there are security guarantees, Moon Jae-in said.
“During the summit, Chairman Kim Jong-un showed his firm resolve for North Korea’s denuclearization. He said that he can abandon all nuclear programs if he receives the guarantees of security and preserving his regime. He also showed great interest in his country’s economic development,” Moon Jae-in said in his exclusive interview to TASS First Deputy Director-General Mikhail Gusman for TASS, government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta and the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
Moon Jae-in stressed that the Panmunjom Declaration adopted at the summit confirmed “the will of the leaders of the North and the South to achieve peace, stability and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula.”
On April 27, North Korean and South Korean leaders, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, met in the border village of Panmunjom for a historic summit, the first in more than a decade. They signed a joint Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul and Pyongyang reaffirmed that their common objective is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and reached an agreement on continuing active top-level dialogue.
Thus far, the prospect of a denuclearized Korea and a peace agreement being hammered out looks to be on the right track as diplomacy improves between the parties concerned. The questions surrounding it come largely to what kind of security guarantees the US will provide, what that means for the US military presence in the region, and whether Trump will find some lame excuse to back out the process altogether, or whether he will pursue its success in an effort to boost his fragile ego. Only time will tell.
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