Historic DPRK-US Summit

By our Asian Affairs correspondent

Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un held talks with US president Donald Trump in Singapore this week that many hope will pave the way to lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. Chairman Kim met President Trump in a historic summit in Singapore on Tuesday. The meeting, at the Capella Hotel on Singapore’s Sentosa Island on 12th June,

ended with the signing of a joint statement and an agreement for further face-to-face meetings in Washington and Pyongyang in the future.

On his return to Washington Donald Trump tweeted that the ‘nuclear threat’ had gone. “Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office.” Trump said. “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong-un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future”.

The joint document called the summit “an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future”. It added that "President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously."

Chairman Kim pledged his “firm and unwavering commitment to the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” while the Americans “committed to provide security guarantees” to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), according to the agreement signed by both leaders in Singapore following decades of hostilities between the two nations.

            Though the lifting of the harsh sanctions regime against the DPRK has been left for future negotiations the Americans have agreed to halt the provocative US-south Korean war-games while Trump spoke about the eventual withdrawal of all American troops on the Korean peninsula at the press conference that followed the end of the talks.

            Kim Jong Un confirmed his commitment to the “complete denuclearisation of Korean Peninsula”, a phrase that covers the American nuclear arsenal that threatens north Korea as well as the DPRK’s nuclear deterrent. Washington and Pyongyang have also committed to recovering the remains of American POWs and the remains of those missing in action during the Korean War “including the immediate repatriation of those already identified”.

Both countries have agreed to hold follow-up negotiations led by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a relevant high-level DPRK official, “at the earliest possible date” in order to implement the outcomes of the historic summit.

Trump said north Korea's denuclearisation process would be starting “very quickly” while the DPRK leader stated that the world was about to see “a major change”. Both sides expressed a unified position on the importance of respecting the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous actions to achieve peace, stability, and denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

The Democratic Korean leader said that if Washington continues to take “sincere steps to build trust” the DPRK will also take “measures of goodwill”. During the summit, the two leaders agreed to continue the dialogue and accepted each other's invitations to visit north Korea and the United States.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, in Moscow this week Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. Kim Yong Nam is coming to Moscow to attend the FIFA World Cup opening ceremony, Peskov told a daily news briefing, without giving more details. Peskov reiterated Russia's position that there is no alternative to political and diplomatic methods of settling the Korean problem.