South Korean President Moon Jae-in began his third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday with possibly his hardest mission to date — brokering some kind of compromise to keep North Korea’s talks with Washington from imploding and pushing ahead with his own plans to expand economic cooperation and bring a stable peace to the Korean Peninsula.
Kim gave the South Korean president an exceedingly warm welcome, meeting him and his wife at Pyongyang’s airport — itself a very unusual gesture — then riding into town with Moon in an open limousine through streets lined with crowds of North Koreans, who cheered and waved the flag of their country and a blue-and-white flag that symbolises Korean unity.
The made-for-television welcome is par for course for Moon’s summits with Kim. Hours after his arrival, Moon began official summit with Kim. They were joined by two of their top deputies — spy chief Suh Hoon and presidential security director Chung Eui-yong for Moon, and Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and senior Workers’ Party official Kim Yong Chol for North Korean leader, according to Moon’s office.