North, South Korea Hold Rare Face-to-Face Talks | WPN World People News

President Donald Trump is calling Tuesday's rare face-to-face talks between North and South Korea "a big start," hoping they go beyond whether the North will be a part of next month's Winter Olympics.

Representatives from both nations, who are still officially at war, are meeting formally meet in Panmunjom — the so-called peace village straddling the border where the 1953 armistice ending the fighting was signed.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in his New Year's Day message that he is willing to send a delegation to the Winter Games in South Korea, moments after boasting of a nuclear button on his desk that could fire a missile at the United States.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has sought better ties with the belligerent North, responded by offering talks with Kim's government.

Tuesday's talks are widely expected to focus on the Olympics and whether athletes from the North and South can march jointly at the opening ceremonies.

Other topics are likely to include resuming family reunions and a general improvement in relations.

The U.S. has no part in Tuesday's talks but is looking toward its close ally South Korea to possibly lead to some kind of dialogue with the North Korean regime.

"The sooner the Trump administration follows Moon's lead in opening a direct channel to Pyongyang, the better," professor John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul writes in Foreign Affairs magazine. "Peacemaking efforts between the two Koreas alone are only part of the solution. But they could be an important catalyst and generate positive side effects, paving the way for the United States and North Korea to resume their own dialogue."

As of this week, the chances of a North Korean-U.S. dialogue appear remote.

Trump responded to Kim's remark of a nuclear button on his desk with a tweet that he has a "bigger and more powerful" button on his desk and that his works.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has not completely ruled out diplomacy with the North. He says Pyongyang would benefit as much as anyone in the Asia-Pacific region. But he says there cannot be any talks with North Korea until its denuclearization is "complete, verifiable, irreversible."

The North is extremely unlikely to agree to this, no matter how heavy the sanctions get, just as the U.S. is not likely to agree to the North's demands to end annual large-scale joint war games with the South.

Some analysts say the U.S. should simply accept North Korea into the family of nuclear-armed nations and work with China and Russia in keeping the North contained.

But the U.S. views North Korea as an unstable nation run by a dangerous dictator, with no clear way of knowing how he would lash out if he feels his regime is threatened, from within and without.

Source: Voice of America