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| President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping / Korea Times file |
By Kim Bo-eun
President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping may join the summit to be held between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this month in Vietnam to declare an end to the Korean War.
As U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun stated last week, President Trump is open to formally ending the war as part of measures to spur denuclearization talks with North Korea. This is an idea Moon, Xi and Kim have all been supporting.
One major obstacle was North Korea's opposition to the continued presence of U.S. troops in South Korea. However, the North has reportedly changed its stance on this.
U.S. and South Korean officials said ending the Korean War is a major topic in the ongoing pre-summit talks in Pyongyang.
The South China Morning Post reported President Xi may fly to Vietnam while President Trump is meeting with Kim.
Cheong Wa Dae said the possibility of President Moon Jae-in heading to Vietnam was low, but did not rule this out, stating it would depend on the ongoing working-level negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.
The declaration reached between Moon and Kim at their first summit in April last year stated that they would seek to hold trilateral talks with the U.S. or quadrilateral talks including China to end the war and achieve a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea, China and the U.S.-led U.N. forces are signatories to the armistice that halted the Korean War.
The South Korean President actively supports holding a four-party meeting to end the war, and the government is expected to boost efforts in the coming weeks to create the circumstances under which such a multilateral summit could take place.
The government is known to have sought a trilateral summit around the June summit between Trump and Kim last year, hoping to declare an end to the war.
The U.S. appears to be ready to end the war, according to Biegun's address at Stanford University last week.
The North Korean leader mentioned the need for multilateral talks to sign a peace treaty in his New Year address. He is believed to have discussed the matter with the Chinese president on his visit to Beijing last month.
Kim Joon-hyung, a professor at Handong Global University, said the summit between Kim and Trump could lead to an end of war declaration by the four parties, although with caveats.
"The North Korean leader mentioned a multilateral framework in his New Year address, and the recent display of China's willingness to take part has placed greater meaning on the end of war declaration," he said on a CBS radio show, Thursday.
"If an end of war declaration is discussed as a step toward a peace treaty, it could be made by the four countries this time."
Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said "The possibility appears low."
"It is unclear whether the U.S. would want to include China in the process," he said.
He also pointed out "with little time remaining, it would be unlikely that the four countries would be able to succeed in drawing up a joint declaration."
Instead it seems more likely that North Korea and the U.S. would declare an end to the war and that the declaration would likely be a political statement, he said.
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