United States President Donald Trump said Saturday he may meet with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un in three to four weeks, amid great optimism that their meeting will achieve the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
A day earlier, last Friday, Kim told South Korean President Moon Jae-In he was looking forward to meeting with Trump. “Once we start talking, the US will know that I am not a person to launch nuclear weapons at South Korea, the Pacific, or the United States,” President Moon’s spokesman Yoon Young-chan quoted Kim as saying.
During the recent summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea, the two agreed to officially end the Korean War of 1950-53 that had ended only with an armistice and not a peace treaty. They agreed to work toward the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea announced it has suspended all nuclear and missile tests and closed down its nuclear testing grounds, but substancial discussions and actual agreement on this appeared to have been reserved for the coming Trump-Kim meeting.
North Korea may, in turn, ask the US to remove its troops from South Korea and its nuclear umbrella protecting South Korea and Japan. Trump said Saturday he had a long talk with South Korea President Moon as well and with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Our own President Duterte who had earlier called Kim Jong-Un a dangerous maniac who could trigger nuclear war in the region, said Sunday morning in a Davao City press conference that “with one master stroke, Kim has become a hero. He has become my idol…. Someday, if I get to meet him, I’d like to congratulate him.”
At one point during the recent North-South summit, there was great praise for the South’s President Moon, with some proposing that he be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Moon has indeed done a lot of groundwork for all that is happening today. But there is still the coming summit between Trump and Kim in three to four weeks.
If at that meeting, a firm and definite peace agreement is reached, it may well be a Peace Prize to be shared by the three leaders for ending a nuclear threat that has so long hung over the entire world, but most especially over the nations in this part of the world, including the Philippines.
