SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un for the third time this year amid a deadlock in denuclearization talks between the US and North Korea.
During a three-day summit in the North Korean capital, both leaders are expected to discuss ways of defusing military tension along their heavily fortified border, as well as restarting their joint economic cooperation with massive investments from the South.
The summit, however, is not expected to yield tangible results about Pyongyang’s denuclearization, which is well down the list of agenda items for the Moon-Kim summit talks.
Upon his arrival at the Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang, Moon and his wife Kim Jung-sook were greeted by Kim and his wife. With bright smiles, Kim hugged Moon, as he did at their second encounter at the northern part of the border village of Panmunjeom in May. Thousands of North Korean residents holding flower bouquets waved national and unification flags and an honor guard quick-marched in tight lines.
Riding a black convertible Mercedes limousine, both leaders rode together along the Pyongyang streets to the Paekhwawon State Guesthouse, while their wives shared a separate vehicle to the luxury guest house, where former South Korean Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun stayed during their summits with Kim Jong Un’s father in 2000 and 2007 respectively.
The first Moon-Kim meeting was held at 3:45 p.m. and continued for two hours at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party. The two sides are expected to discuss ways toward signing a permanent peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which had ended in a truce, according to the presidential office.
Kim expressed his hope for progress in the nuclear talks with the US, thanking Moon for his balancing role between Washington and Pyongyang.
“Thanks to this (US-North Korea meeting), regional conditions stabilized and a more advanced outcome is expected,” the North Korean leader said at the start of the meeting.
Praising Kim’s “bold decision,” Moon said: “I feet the great weight we must bear, along with a heavy responsibility. I wish this will be a summit that produces abundant results as a gift to the 80 million people (of the Korean Peninsula) ahead of Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving Day).”
A day before departing to Pyongyang, Moon said on Twitter: “What I want to achieve is peace. Not a tentative change which could be volatile depending on the international situation, but irreversible, permanent and unwavering peace, regardless of what might happen in the global arena.”
As part of efforts to secure peace and closer ties with the communist North, Moon is expected to focus on ways of easing military tensions, including the possibility of disarming the Joint Security Area in the Panmunjeom, removing front-line guard posts and preventing naval conflicts along their boundary in the Yellow Sea.
Another key topic for this summit is expanding their joint economic projects that have been suspended for a decade owing to North Korea’s provocations, including nuclear tests and test-firings of ballistic missiles.
President Moon has pledged efforts to improve the North’s poor infrastructure, such as roads, railways and electricity supply under his so-called “New Economic Map Initiative.” To that end, Moon decided this time to take South Korean business tycoons with him to the reclusive state to let them discuss practical economic cooperation with North Korean officials.
Among those included in Moon’s economic delegation are Lee Jae-yong, heir to the Samsung Group; Choi Tae-won, chairman of SK Corporation; Koo Kwang-mo, CEO of LG Group; and Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of Hyundai Group.
But increasing economic engagement with the North has sparked a backlash since for now almost all inter-Korean economic projects with North Korea are prohibited by US-led United Nations economic sanctions on North Korea.
“It seems, being accompanied by business tycoons, President Moon wants to showcase his will to expand inter-Korean economic cooperation,” said Hyun Jin-kwon, an associate professor of the economics department at Ajou Unversity in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. “But it should be very cautious since North Korea is still imposed by economic sanctions. Any hasty business cooperation with the North could be a violation of the international sanctions.”
The inclusion of billionaire Samsung scion Lee Jae-yong is controversial as Lee was convicted of crimes related to a bribery scandal involving former President Park Geun-hye. Lee initially received a five-year prison term and later it was reduced to two and a half years and suspended. He awaits a final ruling.
“Trials are trials; work is work,” said Im Jong-seok, presidential chief of staff, the supervisor of this summit between Moon and Kim, at a press briefing Monday.
Im, Moon’s right-hand man, admitted this summit was not likely to be used as a breakthrough to the stalled denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
“It’s difficult to have any optimistic outlook (for progress on denuclearization),” he told reporters. “The summit is expected to produce meaningful agreements that fundamentally remove the danger of armed clashes and ease fears of war (between the two Koreas).”
Leaders of two Koreas meet in hopes of easing tension
Leaders of two Koreas meet in hopes of easing tension
- President Moon has pledged efforts to improve the North’s poor infrastructure, such as roads, railways and electricity supply under his so-called “New Economic Map Initiative”
- Kim expressed his hope for progress in the nuclear talks with the US, thanking Moon for his balancing role between Washington and Pyongyang
Mystery of CIA’s lost nuclear device haunts Himalayan villagers 60 years on
- Plutonium-fueled spy system was meant to monitor China’s nuclear activity after 1964 atomic tests
- Porter who took part in Nanda Devi mission warned family of ‘danger buried in snow’
NEW DELHI: Porters who helped American intelligence officers carry a nuclear spy system up the precarious slopes of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, returned home with stories that sent shockwaves through nearby villages, leaving many in fear that still holds six decades later.
A CIA team, working with India’s Intelligence Bureau, planned to install the device in the remote part of the Himalayas to monitor China, but a blizzard forced them to abandon the system before reaching the summit.
When they returned, the device was gone.
The spy system contained a large quantity of highly radioactive plutonium-238 — roughly a third of the amount used in the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the Second World War.
“The workers and porters who went with the CIA team in 1965 would tell the story of the nuclear device, and the villagers have been living in fear ever since,” said Narendra Rana from the Lata village near Nanda Devi’s peak.
His father, Dhan Singh Rana, was one of the porters who carried the device during the CIA’s mission in 1965.
“He told me there was a danger buried in the snow,” Rana said. “The villagers fear that as long as the device is buried in the snow, they are safe, but if it bursts, it will contaminate the air and water, and no one will be safe after that.”
During the Sino-Indian tensions in the 1960s, India cooperated with the US in surveillance after China conducted its first nuclear tests in 1964. The Nanda Devi mission was part of this cooperation and was classified for years. It only came under public scrutiny in 1978, when the story was broken by Outsider magazine.
The article caused an uproar in India, with lawmakers demanding the location of the nuclear device be revealed and calling for political accountability. The same year, then Prime Minister Morarji Desai set up a committee to assess whether nuclear material in the area near Nanda Devi could pollute the Ganges River, which originates there.
The Ganges is one of the world’s most crucial freshwater sources, with about 655 million people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh depending on it for their essential needs.
The committee, chaired by prominent scientists, submitted its report a few months later, dismissing any cause for concerns, and establishing that even in the worst-case scenario of the device’s rupture, the river’s water would not be contaminated.
But for the villagers, the fear that the shell containing radioactive plutonium could break apart never goes away, and peace may only come once it is found.
Many believe the device, trapped within the glacier’s shifting ice, may have moved downhill over time.
Rana’s father told him that the device felt hot when it was carried, and he believed it might have melted its way into the glacier, remaining buried deep inside.
An imposing mass of rock and ice, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m is the second-highest mountain in India after Kangchenjunga.
When a glacier near the mountain burst in 2021, claiming over 200 lives, scientists explained that the disaster was due to global warming, but in nearby villages the incident was initially blamed on a nuclear explosion.
“They feared the device had burst. Those rescuing people were afraid they might die from radiation,” Rana said. “If any noise is heard, if any smoke appears in the sky, we start fearing a leak from the nuclear device.”
The latent fear surfaces whenever natural disasters strike or media coverage puts the missing device back in the spotlight. Most recently, a New York Times article on the CIA mission’s 60th anniversary reignited the unease.
“The apprehensions are genuine. After 1965, Americans came twice to search for the device. The villagers accompanied them, but it could not be found, which remains a concern for the local community,” said Atul Soti, an environmentalist in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, about 50 km from Nanda Devi.
“People are worried. They have repeatedly sought answers from the government, but no clear response has been provided so far. Periodically, the villagers voice their concerns, and they need a definitive government statement on this issue.”
Despite repeated queries whenever media attention arises, Indian officials have not released detailed updates since the Desai-appointed committee submitted its findings.
“The government should issue a white paper to address people’s concerns. The white paper will make it clear about the status of the device, and whether leakage from the device could pollute the Ganges River,” Soti told Arab News.
“The government should be clear. If the government is not reacting, then it further reinforces the fear.”
