Kim Jong Un invites South Korea's President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to visit Pyongyang for direct negotiations, Seoul said Saturday. This would be the first meeting between Korean leaders in more than a decade, and it marks a significant, if at present mostly symbolic, step toward rapprochement on the divided peninsula.
The invitation to meet "at an early date" was personally extended by Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, over lunch with Moon, who "practically accepted" and replied, "Let's create conditions to make it happen," South Korean officials reported. Kim Yo Jong is in South Korea for the Winter Olympics, hosted in Pyeongchang and featuring united Korean teams.
Vice President Mike Pence, who is also in Pyeongchang for the Games, told reporters Friday he is certain South Korea will stick to the United States' strategy for dealing with the Kim regime. "I am very confident, as President Trump is, that President Moon will continue to stand strongly with us in our extreme-pressure campaign," Pence said. "Make no mistake about it, the United States of America has viable military options to deal with a nuclear threat from North Korea but, that being said, we hope for a better path."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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