SEOUL — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea will meet for the first time on April 27, officials said Thursday, setting a date for talks meant to extend the recent détente on the Korean Peninsula and pave the way for discussions between Kim and President Trump.
Early this month Kim agreed to a meeting with Moon, part of a flurry of diplomacy around North Korea’s nuclear program that began with the North’s participation last month in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Senior negotiators from both Koreas met Thursday at Panmunjom, the so-called truce village on the countries’ border, to agree on a date and discuss other aspects of the summit meeting.
The two Korean leaders will meet at Peace House, a South Korean building inside Panmunjom, according to a joint statement the negotiators issued at the end of their talks Thursday. Peace House lies south of the demarcation line that bisects Panmunjom, which means that Kim would become the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the Korean War.
Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, the South’s chief delegate to the Panmunjom talks, hinted at progress toward including denuclearization in the agenda for the Kim-Moon meeting. But he said the two Koreas might need another round of talks in coming weeks to settle the matter.
“The South and North agreed on efforts to make the summit successful, sharing its historic significance in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, settling peace there and improving inter-Korean relations,’’ Cho told reporters.
The meeting will be the third ever held between leaders of the two Koreas. Kim’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, met with two South Korean presidents — Kim Dae-jung in 2000 and Roh Moo-hyun in 2007 — in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
The diplomacy was welcomed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who has repeatedly expressed angst about the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula. “I think there is here an opportunity for a peaceful solution to something that, a few months ago, was haunting us as the biggest danger we were facing,’’ Guterres told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.
South Korean envoys who met with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang early this month said he had expressed willingness to negotiate with the United States about normalizing ties and giving up his country’s nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees. Kim also vowed to suspend all nuclear and missile tests during the talks, the envoys said.
Kim offered then to meet directly with Trump, who quickly accepted. No date has been set, but Trump said he was willing to meet Kim by May, after Moon’s discussions with him.
This week, Kim surprised both South Korea and the United States by secretly visiting Beijing, in his first trip outside North Korea since taking power. He met with President Xi Jinping of China, the North’s traditional communist ally, in a bid to mend frayed ties before meeting Moon and Trump.
In his discussions with Xi, Kim reaffirmed his intention to meet with the two leaders, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. Later Thursday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency for the first time confirmed Kim’s plan to meet with Moon, without disclosing the time and venue of their meeting.
Moon’s office said Thursday that it was a welcome development, calling it “highly significant’’ that Kim had reportedly confirmed his willingness to discuss denuclearization and meet with the US and South Korean presidents.
