It is the last day of South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Pyeongyang trip, and President Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un embarked on a rare trip this morning to the summit of Baekdusan Mountain, the highest mountain on the Korean peninsula.
The leaders left Pyongyang's Sunan International Airport at around 7:30 a.m., each using his own presidential jet. Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, were first to arrive at Samjiyon airport, the closest airport to the mountain.
The leaders of the two Koreas began their joint climb in a vehicle shortly after their arrival at the airport, and they have arrived at the crater lake on top of the Baekdusan mountain at 10:20 a.m.
The joint press corps also said the leaders have stopped by at a Hyang-do station where trains going to and from the Baekdusan Mountain stop over.
President Moon will be heading right back home straight to Seoul from the Samjiyon airport, near the Baekdusan Mountain after his last meal in the North.
Meanwhile, the South Korean leader has been expressing hopes he could climb the mountain through North Korean soil, and not through the Chinese side. He confided such wish to the North Korean leader when they met for their first summit back in April.
Yesterday night, while attending North Korea's mass games at Pyeongyang's Rungrado May Day Stadium,… President Moon Jae-in delivered a public speech in front of some 150-thousand citizens of the North Korean capital as the first South Korean leader to attend the event, and the first to deliver a speech to a mass North Korean audience.
While explaining some of the key points of the Pyeongyang Summit Agreement that was reached by the two leaders,… President Moon declared to the 80 million Koreans and to the world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula…adding that the leaders of the Korean Peninsula have come up with specific measures to completely eliminate the fear of war and the danger of armed conflict between the two Koreas.
President Moon also emphasized the achievements of the Inter-Korean summits and said together they would build a new future.
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump praised the inter-Korean summit, adding the agreements reached between the two leaders, in which the North said it would permanently abolish its key missile facilities with witnesses, as being "very good news."
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. is prepared to immediately engage in talks with North Korea in the wake of this week's inter-Korean summit.
Pompeo says he has invited his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho,... to meet him in New York next week, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where they are both scheduled to be in attendance.
He also said the U.S. has invited Pyeongyang officials to meet the new U.S. special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, in Vienna "at the earliest opportunity."
South and North Korea's neighboring countries of China and Japan also gave their responses to the third inter-Korean summit of 2018.
The Chinese government responded Wednesday... before the inter-Korean joint declaration was announced the following day that it welcomes the dialogue.
Meanwhile, Japan says it hopes improved inter-Korean relations could lead to the resumption of denuclearization dialogue between North Korea and the U.S. It also called for specific actions from the North for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
In a regular briefing, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called for North Korea to promptly carry out its denuclearization efforts as agreed upon by the two Koreas, as well as the agreements made during the Singapore summit in April.
Japan says it hopes for a separate summit between North Korea and Japan, saying it's communicating through various channels in South Korea and Japan to make it happen, but nothing is settled as of now.
Source: Arirang News
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