North Korean leader Kim Jong Un invited the South's President Moon Jae-in for a summit in Pyongyang Saturday, Seoul said, even as the US warned against falling for Pyongyang's Olympic charm offensive.
The invitation, delivered by Kim's visiting sister Kim Yo Jong,
said Kim was willing to meet the South's leader "at the earliest date
possible", said a spokesman for the presidential Blue House.
An inter-Korean summit would be the third of its kind, after Kim's father and predecessor Kim Jong Il met the South's Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun in 2000 and 2007 respectively, both of them in Pyongyang.
But
it could threaten to sow division between Moon, who has long argued for
engagement with the nuclear-armed North to bring it to the negotiating
table, and US President Donald Trump, who last year traded personal
insults and threats of war with Kim.
Washington
insists that Pyongyang -- which is under multiple sets of UN Security
Council sanctions -- must show a willingness to give up its weapons
before any negotiations can happen.
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South
Korea's President Moon Jae-in (C) greets Kim Yo Jong (L), North Korean
leader Kim Jong Un's sister, and North Korea's ceremonial head of state
Kim Yong Nam (R) during their meeting at the presidential Blue House in
Seoul(YONHAP/AFP)
After
months of silence on whether it would even take part in the Pyeongchang
Winter Olympics in the South, which had their opening ceremony Friday,
the Games have driven a rapprochement on the peninsula, while the
North's athletes, performers and delegates have dominated the headlines.
Moon
met Kim Yo Jong and the North's ceremonial head of state, the elderly
Kim Yong Nam -- technically the highest-level Northern official ever to
go to the South -- for talks and lunch at the Blue House on Saturday in a
landmark meeting.
"Special envoy Kim
Yo Jong delivered a personal letter" from her brother stating his
desire to "improve inter-Korean relations", said Moon's spokesman Kim
Eui-kyeom, and verbally conveyed his offer to Moon "to visit the North
at his most convenient time".
Moon
did not immediately accept the offer, calling instead for efforts to
"create the right conditions to realise" such a visit and urging
Pyongyang to actively seek dialogue with the US, he added.
"It is absolutely necessary for the North and the United States to engage in talks at an early date," he cited Moon as saying.
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North Korea showed off its ICBMs at a military parade in Pyongyang on the eve of the Winter Olympics(KCNA via KNS/AFP/File)
Tensions
between the two soared last year as Pyongyang launched intercontinental
ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland and carried out
by far its most powerful nuclear test to date.
Analysts
believe the diplomatic drive by the North -- which put its ICBMs on
show at a military parade in Pyongyang on Thursday -- is seeking to
weaken the measures against it, and could be trying to loosen the
alliance between Seoul and Washington.
Kim
Yo Jong has rapidly risen up the ladder since her brother inherited
power from their father, and is now among his closest confidantes.
Her visit makes her the first member of the dynasty to set foot in the South since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
'Blind eye'
Moon
shook hands with both Kim Yo Jong and Kim Yong Nam at the Olympics
opening ceremony and they cheered as athletes from North and South
entered the arena together behind a unification flag showing an
undivided Korean peninsula.
US Vice
President Mike Pence, who was seated in the same box, did not interact
with the North Koreans at any point, US officials said.
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Kim's
sister Kim Jong Un and US Vice President Mike Pence attended the Winter
Games opening ceremony in the same box but did not interact(AFP)
He
also did not shake hands with Kim Yong Nam while making a brief
appearance at a leaders' reception ahead of the ceremony -- although
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose country is also regularly
threatened by Pyongyang, did so, while exchanging pleasantries with the
North Korean.
"The US will not allow
the propaganda charade by the North Korean regime to go unchallenged on
the world stage," Pence tweeted on Saturday. "The world can NOT turn a blind eye to the oppression & threats of the Kim regime."
Pence has repeatedly said he would deliver a tough message to the North in any meeting.
"At the outset of any new dialogue or negotiations," he said Friday, Pyongyang had to "put
denuclearisation on the table and take concrete steps with the world
community to dismantle, permanently and irreversibly, their nuclear and
ballistic missile programmes.
"Denuclearisation has to be the starting point of any change," he said.
Kimchi and soju
In
stark contrast, two kinds of kimchi -- the fermented cabbage that
features in every Korean meal -- were on the menu for lunch Saturday,
one mild Northern style version and a spicier Southern recipe, a Blue
House official told AFP, along with soju, the traditional Korean rice
liquor.
The
smiles and handshakes at the meeting were friendlier than some of the
North's past history with the complex -- in 1968 it sent commandos to
attack it to try to assassinate the South's then leader.
The
North's official media have reflected the positive tone, with the
ruling party's mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun carrying seven pictures of the
delegation's departure from Pyongyang and arrival in Incheon on its
front page Saturday.
On page two it
printed seven more of the opening ceremony and its representatives'
meetings and handshakes with Moon, whom it described as president.
It
is rare for the North's official media to refer to the South's leader
as president, usually describing them as chief executive or similar, and
even more unusual for a picture of them to be shown.
The paper lambasted Pence for his "anti-DPRK lunatic spasm which does not fit the spirit of the Olympics".
"We don't do such treacherous and dirty things exploiting sports festivals for political purposes like the US does," it insisted.