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South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un take a walk around the Samjiyon guest house

Through the Pyongyang inter-Korea summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, South Korean President Moon Jae-in reignited the spluttering dialog between North and South Korea. The US government and President Donald Trump praised the results of the summit and announced that dialogue between North Korea and the US would also resume.

Setting the inter-Korean summit back on track, a meeting which was nearly derailed, through his surprise summit with Kim in Panmunjom in May earlier this year, and in facilitating negotiations with North Korea during the Pyongyang summit, Moon seems to be living up to Donald Trump’s request that he act as “chief negotiator.”

On Sept. 19 (local time) Trump said, of the Pyongyang Declaration of September 2018, “We had very good news from North Korea, South Korea. [. . .] We’re making tremendous progress with respect to North Korea,” and announced his intention to meeting Kim Jong-un.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also expressed his intention to meet with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho at the UN General Assembly in New York, as well as to open a practical dialogue between North Korea and the US in Vienna, Austria.

NK-US negotiations to be held in New York and Vienna soon

In Article Five of the Pyongyang Declaration, Moon and Kim stated that “the Korean Peninsula must be turned into a land of peace free from nuclear weapons and nuclear threats, and that substantial progress toward this end must be made in a prompt manner,” and to this end, included pledges to “permanently shut down the missile engine test site and launch platform at Tongchang Village under the observation of experts from relevant countries,” as well as to take additional measures, such as the “permanent shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facility,” as long as the US takes “corresponding measures.”

Moon also prompted a spoken declaration from Kim to actively work towards a peaceful Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons or the threat of nuclear weapons. This represented the first pledge on denuclearization directly from Kim. When dialogue between North Korea and the US showed signs of strain, Moon locked in the inter-Korean summit in for mid-September, although it had originally been planned only for the “fall.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wave to Pyongyang residents on the streets during a motor convoy through the city on Sept. 18. (photo pool)

In short, President Moon’s visit to North Korea had seemingly restarted the dialogue between North Korea and the US, which had been deadlocked amid disagreements over denuclearization and the termination of the war. Just ahead of his trip to North Korea, on Sept. 18, at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Moon made a statement to the effect that even if this trip to North Korea led to the resumption of dialogue between North Korea and the US, that alone would be hugely significant.

“The weighty issue of denuclearization hangs over the inter-Korea summit,” said Blue House Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok, who was the chairman of the preparatory committee for the inter-Korea summit.

“[Due to the denuclearization issue], this difficult summit will have to be approached with caution, and it is difficult to make any optimistic predictions,” Im said. This statement indicates just how much denuclearization and the arbitration of dialogue between North Korea and the US was perceived as a knotty issue.