S. Korea: Kim commits to summit with Trump, denuclearization

Moon, who brokered the summit between Washington and Pyongyang, likely used Saturday's meeting to confirm Kim's willingness to enter nuclear negotiations with Trump and clarify what steps Kim has in mind in the process of denuclearization, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification.

"While Washington and Pyongyang have expressed their hopes for a summit through published statements, Moon has to step up as the mediator because the surest way to set the meeting in stone would be an official confirmation of intent between heads of states," Hong said.

Some U.S. officials have talked about a comprehensive one-shot deal in which North Korea fully eliminates its nukes first and receives rewards later. But Kim, through two summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping in March and May, has called for a phased and synchronized process in which every action he takes is met with a reciprocal reward from the United States.

Before he canceled the summit, Trump did not rule out an incremental approach that would provide incentives along the way to the North.

Following an unusually provocative 2017 in which his engineers tested a purported thermonuclear warhead and three long-range missiles theoretically capable of striking mainland U.S. cities, Kim has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months. He has had the summits with Moon and Xi, as well as two meetings with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In addition to the team on North Korea that Pompeo set up last year when he was CIA director, he has now enlisted veteran U.S. diplomat Sung Kim to help in the process, a senior U.S. official said. Kim, who is currently ambassador to the Philippines, also served as ambassador to South Korea and was part of the U.S. negotiating team that last held substantive denuclearization talks with North Korea during the George W. Bush administration in 2005.

Photos released by South Korea's presidential office showed Moon arriving at the North Korean side of the Panmunjom truce village on Saturday and shaking hands with Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, before sitting down with Kim for their summit.

Moon was accompanied by his spy chief, Suh Hoon, while Kim was joined by Kim Yong Chol, a former military intelligence chief who is now Kim's top official on inter-Korean relations. The two leaders embraced as Moon departed.

At their first meeting on April 27, Kim and Moon first announced "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" and permanent peace, which Seoul has tried to sell as a meaningful breakthrough to set up the summit with Trump.

Ahead of that summit, the Koreas established their first-ever leaders' hotline to enable Moon and Kim to engage in direct communication and defuse crises. But Moon said Sunday that he and Kim decided to meet again, rather than have a telephone conversation, as their aides suggested "candid" face-to-face talks between the leaders.

Relations between the two Koreas had chilled in recent weeks, with North Korea canceling a high-level meeting with Seoul over South Korea's participation in regular military exercises with the United States and insisting that it will not return to talks unless its grievances are resolved.

South Korea was caught off guard by Trump's abrupt cancellation of his summit with Kim, with the U.S. president citing hostility in recent North Korean comments. Moon said Trump's decision left him "perplexed" and was "very regrettable." He urged Washington and Pyongyang to resolve their differences through "more direct and closer dialogue between their leaders."

Saturday's summit marked the fourth meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas since they were divided at the end of the World War II in 1945.

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Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.

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