Kim Jong Un (Kim Cho’ng-u’n) met with a delegation representing ROK President Moon Jae In at the Workers’ Party of Korea [WPK] Central Committee HQ in central Pyongyang on September 5 (Wednesday). Also in attendance was WPK Vice Chairman and United Front Department Director Kim Yong Chol (Kim Yo’ng-ch’o’l). The interaction “proceeded in a compatriotic and warm atmosphere.”
Jong Un met with Ch’o’ngwadae officials Jong Ui Yong, So Hun (Director of the National Intelligence Service), Chon Hae Song (vice-minister of Unification), Kim Sang Gyun (NIS Deputy Director), and Yun Kon Yong (head of State Affairs Planning) and he “warmly welcomed their visit.” The meeting participants had a commemorative photo session and the ROK delegation “extended the greetings of sincere gratitude to Kim Jong Un for being so kind to meet them so quickly though he was very busy with state affairs.
A letter from President Moon was handed over to Kim Jong Un. After he read the letter, Jong Un “expressed his thanks to the President for sending the good personal letter which expressed a firm will to wisely overcome many challenges in the future, too, and open a bright future of our nation while appreciating the fresh advance in the relations between the north and the south.” He also said he that he “fully supports and sympathizes with the President’s determination and that he remains unchanged in his determination to strive hard to bring the fellow countrymen better results at an early date, bearing in mind the mission before the nation and its expectation.”
Kim Jong Un used the meeting as an opportunity to “convey his warm greetings to the President” and remarked that he “was proud of the fact that thanks to the sincere efforts and bold decisions he made with strenuous efforts and deep thought together with President Moon Jae In, dramatic moments and good agreements which no one could ever think of were achieved this year, setting right the north-south ties that had been derailed and had remained tragic for years and making significant and excellent successes oriented toward national reconciliation and peace.”
Jong Un said that he “highly appreciates and always feels grateful to President Moon Jae In for his sincerity and hard-work for the DPRK-US summit, the first of its kind in history” and that he is “pleased over the fact that technical contacts in various fields were made between the north and the south, the reunions of separated families and relatives were realized and north-south military talks and the work of setting up a joint liaison office progressed well after the historic P’anmunjo’m meeting” and he added that ” we should value all these successes which the north and the south made hand in hand and keep advancing without deviation the north-south ties that have definitely entered the new orbit of peace, the orbit of reconciliation and cooperation.”
The Suryo’ng “exchanged wide-ranging opinions with the special envoy delegation over the schedule for the Pyongyang summit meeting due in September and its topics, and came to a satisfactory agreement with it” and talked with the ROK delegation “over many issues arising in accelerating the development of the north-south relations and preserving peace and stability of the Korean peninsula.”
Kim Jong Un noted that it was the DPRK’s “fixed stand and his will to completely remove the danger of armed conflict and horror of war from the Korean peninsula and turn it into the cradle of peace without nuclear weapons and free from nuclear threat” and said that “the north and the south should further their efforts to realize the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”