Kim Jong Un invites South Korea's President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang

Kim Yo Jong shakes hands with President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in during the Opening Ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games.

(Image credit: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

last updated 10 February 2018

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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

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.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox