North Korea is willing to hold talks with the United States on denuclearisation and will suspend nuclear tests while such talks are underway, the South said on Tuesday, 6 March, after a delegation returned from the North where it met its leader Kim Jong Un.
North and South Korea, still technically at war but enjoying a sharp easing in tension since the Winter Olympics in the South last month, will also hold their first summit in more than a decade next month at the border village of Panmunjom, the head of the delegation, Chung Eui-yong, told a media briefing.
North Korea made clear its willingness to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and the fact there is no reason for it to have a nuclear programme if military threats against the North are resolved and its regime is secure.Chung Eui-yong to the media
He also cited the North as saying that it would not carry out nuclear or missile tests while talks with the United States were underway. North Korea has not carried out any such tests since November last year.
Washington and Pyongyang have been at loggerheads for months over the North's nuclear and missile programmes, with US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un trading insults and threatening war. North Korea has regularly vowed never to give up its nuclear programme, which it sees as an essential deterrent against US plans for invasion.
The United States, which stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the Korean War, denies any such plans.
To ensure close communication, the two Koreas, whose 1950-53 conflict ended in a mere truce, not a peace treaty, will set up a hotline between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un, Chung said.
The last inter-Korean summit was in 2007 when late former president Roh Moo-hyun was in office.
The agreement came on the heels of a visit made by a 10-member South Korean delegation led by Chung to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Monday in hopes of encouraging North Korea and the United States to talk to one another.
Kim Jong Un met senior South Korean government officials for the first time and said it was his “firm will to vigorously advance” inter-Korean ties and pursue reunification, the North’s official news agency said.
Tensions between the two Koreas eased during the Olympics in South Korea, where Moon hosted a high-level North Korean delegation and the two sides presented a joint women's ice hockey team. Kim Jong Un had invited Moon to North Korea for a summit, which was the first such request from a North Korean leader to a South Korean president.
(This article has been edited for length.)
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