Pyeongchang (South Korea) / agencies
IN A RARE GESTURE, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has invited South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang.
If it materlises, it would be the first summit in more than a decade between Korean leaders.
Mr Moon said the Koreas should “make it happen” and encouraged the north to return to negotiations with the US.
The handwritten invitation was delivered by Mr Kim’s influential sister, Kim Yo-jong, at a landmark meeting in the presidential palace in Seoul, before the Winter Olympics.
Ms Kim and the north’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam made up the most senior delegation from the north to visit the south since the Korean War in the 1950s.
The figures from the two Koreas shared kimchi (Korean pickled cabbage) and soju rice liquor, and spoke for three hours.
Ms Kim invited Mr Moon to visit “at the early date possible”, a spokesman for South Korea’s presidential palace said.
Saturday’s meeting, the most significant diplomatic encounter between the two sides in more than a decade, could now be surpassed should Moon accept Kim’s invitation to visit Pyongyang later this year.
Moon responded to the invitation by suggesting the two countries “should accomplish this by creating the right conditions,” adding that talks between North Korea and the United States were also needed, and requested that North Korea be more active in talking with the US, according to Kim Eui-kyeom.
Images from the lunch meeting at the Blue House, which was broadcast live on South Korean TV, showed Moon sat in front of Kim Yo Jong, rather than Kim Yong Nam, technically the more senior official present in the meeting, and head of the North Korean delegation.
