S. Korean leader floats 3-way talks with Trump, Kim

SEOUL, South Korea >> President Moon Jae-in of South Korea said today that he and President Donald Trump could sit down for a three-way summit meeting with Kim Jong Un if their individual meetings with the North Korean leader on denuclearizing his country proceed well in the coming weeks.

Moon and Kim are planning an inter-Korean summit in late April at Peace House, a South Korean conference hall inside Panmunjom, the so-called truce village that straddles the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, separating the two Koreas.

That meeting is expected to be followed by a planned Trump-Kim summit meeting by May. If that meeting takes place, Trump will be the first-ever sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader; Washington and Pyongyang are still technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War was halted with a truce rather than a peace treaty.

While presiding over a meeting Wednesday of government officials preparing for the inter-Korean summit, Moon attached great significance to the venue for his coming meeting with Kim.

“The North Korea-United States summit, which will follow the inter-Korean summit, will itself be a momentous event in world history,” Moon said. “Depending on where the meeting takes place, it will look even more dramatic, and depending on progress, there can be a three-way summit among South and North Korea and the United States.”

Panmunjom and the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ were created in the Korean War armistice of 1953 and remain symbols of the unending hostilities on the divided Korean Peninsula. Peace House is south of the border inside the DMZ, and a visit there by Kim would make him the first North Korean leader to step across the border since the war.

Some South Korean news outlets interpreted Moon’s remarks as indicating that he wanted Trump and Kim to also hold their summit meeting in the DMZ. Holding it in Panmunjom could provide great optics for Moon’s government, which has focused on easing border tensions and playing matchmaker between Washington and Pyongyang.

But Panmunjom carries uncomfortable historical baggage for the United States. North Korean soldiers killed two U.S. Army officers with axes there in 1976. For their one-on-one meeting, Trump and Kim might prefer a more neutral venue not on the Korean Peninsula.

On Wednesday, South Korea proposed holding high-level talks at Panmunjom on March 29 to discuss the agenda and other details of the inter-Korean summit meeting.

North Korea has yet to publicly announce that Kim has invited Trump to a summit meeting, and its state-run news media has not reported on Trump’s acceptance of the offer or the agreement to hold an inter-Korean meeting. Analysts said the silence was not unusual for the North Korean regime, which could fear raising expectations too early among its people.

U.S. officials have been reaching out to the North Koreans to hear directly from them about Kim’s invitation and learn more about his intentions, particularly since he was quoted by South Korean envoys as telling them he was interested in discussing “denuclearizing” his country.

Officials and analysts remain unsure whether Kim’s offer signals a fundamental shift toward dismantling his nuclear arsenal or represents a short-term ploy to confuse his enemies, ease sanctions and buy time to further advance his nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile programs.

Moon indicated that his government is working on what analysts have called a “grand bargain” in which it hopes to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons in return for economic incentives and security guarantees.

He said that the negotiations must aim for “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the permanent peace regime there, the normalization of relations between North Korea and the United States, and improvement of South-North Korean ties, and economic cooperation between the North and the United States or among the two Koreas and the United States.”

U.S. officials hope that North Korea will soon release three Americans held on vague charges of committing “hostile acts,” viewing such a gesture as a sign of good will before a Trump-Kim meeting.

The North’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, visited Stockholm last week to meet with Swedish officials who serve as “protecting power” for Americans held in the North, since Washington and Pyongyang have no diplomatic ties. But on Tuesday, Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, reported no immediate deal on the release of the Americans.

“We would love to have our American citizens brought home — a huge priority for this administration — but as far as we’re concerned there’s nothing underway,” she said.