Koreas to hold summit rehearsals Wednesday

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North Korea

Sun, May 27, 2018 | 14:21

Koreas to hold summit rehearsals Wednesday

Posted : 2018-04-24 18:16

Updated : 2018-04-25 13:39

By Lee Min-hyung

The two Koreas will hold joint rehearsals Wednesday for Friday's summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The rehearsals will be held under the exact same format as the actual summit on Friday. But Cheong Wa Dae has not confirmed the detailed timeline for events on the day of the summit.

Presidential chief of staff Lim Jong-seok will head the southern delegation for the rehearsal. Kim Chang-son, a member of the Party Central Committee from the North, will also visit the summit venue of Peace House on the southern side of the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjeom.

Both sides will engage in comprehensive on-site inspections by tracing detailed routes on which the two leaders will walk during the summit. Other details include the arrangement of furniture at the Peace House.

Lim also plans to hold a final briefing on Thursday, delivering up-to-date preparatory processes for the historic inter-Korean gathering.

"The joint rehearsal will be conducted behind closed doors," a Cheong Wa Dae official told reporters today. The presidential office fell short of revealing other details, due to the gravity of the summit.

The two Koreas ended their round of working-level preparatory talks on Monday, with both sides agreeing to broadcast key events live ― such as Kim Jong-un's arrival at Panmunjeom and the first-ever greeting between Moon and Kim.

Kim will cross the military demarcation line in a car to reach Peace House. The young dictator will then meet with President Moon in person for the first time.

Aside from the government, KT ― a Seoul-based mobile carrier ― also plans to stage a pilot test in the briefing room and at a press center in KINTEX in Gyeonggi Province, by delivering its 360-degree fifth-generation (5G) virtual reality visual demonstration set to be broadcast during the summit.

The company installed the infrastructure in the briefing room and press center to deliver vivid visual coverage of the event to the world.

More than 3,000 reporters here and abroad are expected to cover the summit on Friday.

The upcoming summit is the third in a series of historic gatherings between leaders of the two Koreas. In 2000, President Kim Dae-jung met with his northern counterpart Kim Jong-il, the father of Jong-un, for the first-ever inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang.

The second summit came in 2007 when President Roh Moo-hyun visited Pyongyang.

mhlee@ktimes.com