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US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

In May 2018, 73 years after the division of the Korean Peninsula and 65 years after the Armistice was signed halting the Korean War in 1953, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump will be holding a summit. The epochal meeting of the leaders of two sides which have rejected, threatened and snarled at each other with hostility for more than three decades since the end of the Cold War is likely to pick up the baton from the inter-Korean summit at the end of April and become a historic watershed defining the destiny of the Korean Peninsula.

After coming out of his meeting with Trump on Mar. 8, Blue House National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong announced at the White House that Kim had “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible” and that Trump had “said he would meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”

“I told President Trump that, in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said he is committed to denuclearization. Kim pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests. He understands that the routine joint military exercises between the Republic of Korea and the United States must continue,” Chung said.

Blue House spokesperson Kim Eui-kyum reported that Chung briefed Trump in the Oval Office about the agreement reached with Kim Jong-un during Chung’s visit to North Korea on Mar. 5 and 6, and also conveyed Kim’s message that he and Trump could accomplish something significant if they spoke together in person. Trump agreed to hold a summit on the spot, Kim Eui-kyum also said. A senior official at the Blue House described this as an enthusiastic commitment to dialogue that “surpassed the exploratory phase.”

South Korea‘s National Security Office director Chung Eui-yong

Immediately after Chung’s announcement, Trump posted on Twitter that “Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization… not just a freeze…. Great progress being made… Meeting being planned!”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said that Trump had accepted Kim’s invitation and would be meeting Kim “at a place and time to be determined.”

In a telephone briefing, a senior official in the American government promised to ensure that the results of the meeting would meet global expectations. US National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster is planning to brief the UN Security Council about the North Korean issue on Mar. 12, CNN reported.

South and North Korea holding a summit at the end of April, followed by the leaders of North Korea and the US meeting for the first time ever sometime in May, fully activates a virtuous cycle between South Korea, North Korea and the US aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear issue. If North Korea’s delegation to the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February along with South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s special delegation to the North created the conditions for a North Korea-US summit, then the results of the inter-Korean summit in April will serve to prime the pump on the North Korea-US summit.

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Considering that tensions on the Korean Peninsula peaked last year because of North Korea’s repeated nuclear and missile tests and the American military threats these provoked, this is a dramatic reversal. The South Korean government is likely to move forward with dialogue while maintaining cooperation and partnership with the US and the international community.

“[President Trump’s] leadership and his maximum pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture,” Chung said during the briefing. “The Republic of Korea, the United States, and our partners stand together in insisting that we not repeat the mistakes of the past, and that the pressure will continue until North Korea matches its words with concrete actions.”

Experts have said that the most tangible agreement that could emerge from a North Korea-US summit is a declaration of the end of the Korean War. In terms of international law, the Korean Peninsula remains at a ceasefire, with hostilities on pause. During the Oct. 4 Summit Statement that resulted from the second inter-Korean summit in 2007, South and North Korea agreed to work together to arrange a meeting among the leaders of three or four of the belligerents in the war (South Korea, North Korea, the US and China) in which they would declare the end of the war.

But no further progress was made on these deliberations after power changed hands in South Korea. Presuming that the North Korea-US summit is held in South Korea, it is possible to imagine a symbolic event at which Moon, Trump, and Kim make this declaration.

Naturally, denuclearization is likely to be on the table as well. One possible scenario for the May summit is for North Korea to agree to freeze its nuclear program in the future in exchange for the US making a passive security guarantee in the form of a non-aggression pact. That could lead to a compromise in which the two sides work to normalize bilateral relations while North Korea reconfirms its commitment to dismantling its current nuclear program.

One expert who spoke on condition of anonymity expressed doubt that a confrontational relationship that had dragged on for more than 70 years could be immediately resolved by a single North Korea-US summit. This expert suggested that the May summit would be just the first step toward establishing peace. But the two leaders’ tendency toward “daring decisions” and “hot deals” could also result in a groundbreaking agreement.

Bringing the North Korea-US summit to a successful conclusion requires action to build trust. From that point of view, an expected step would be releasing the three Korean-Americans who are currently detained in North Korea prior to the summit. That would lead to a visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and the question of when and where the summit will be held are likely to naturally come up during that process.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]