A summit between North and South Korea this year is still possible despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the South Korean president’s office said Monday.
While recent weeks have also seen rumors swirl about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s health, a spokesman for South Korean President Moon Jae-in expressed optimism that stalled diplomacy between Pyongyang and Seoul could restart.
“Truly, it seems difficult at the moment, but we do not know what the variables will be in South-North relations,” Kang Min-seok, the spokesman, said in an interview with South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. “So we need to watch [what will happen].”
South Korea will continue to pursue efforts for a potential fourth inter-Korean summit “with patience,” Mr. Kang said, adding that Blue House will also seek cooperation projects with the North “beginning from what’s possible.”
There was no immediate reaction from North Korea to the messaging from Seoul, which comes at a moment of unease over waves of missiles tests that North Korea carried out since U.S. and South Korean attempts to engage in diplomacy with Pyongyang broke down last year.
The coronavirus pandemic has only added to uncertainty around the future of the diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.
Pyongyang has not reported a single confirmed case of COVID-19, despite sharing an 880-mile border with China, where the outbreak began.
China on Monday issued a strict lockdown for Shulan in the northeastern province of Jilin, near the North Korean border, after seeing a spike in new coronavirus cases.
South Korea, with a population of 51.6 million, has reported 10,909 confirmed cases, 259 deaths and 9,632 recoveries, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
Mr. Moon and Mr. Kim have participated in three rounds of summit talks in 2018. But the diplomacy has stalled since denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang also broke down after the February 2019 summit between President Trump and Mr. Kim in Vietnam.
The summit ended after Pyongyang insisted the U.S. lift sanctions before North Korea would dismantle its nuclear program. The White House stood firm that economic relief would come only after verifiable denuclearization steps.
The possibility of renewed dialogue has appeared particularly dim since March, when North Korea launched nine short-range ballistic missiles. On April 14, the North launched a number of cruise missiles, on the eve of parliamentary elections in South Korea.
Weeks later, on May 3, North and South Korean military forces traded gunfire in what U.S. officials said started with an “accidental” shot from the northern side of the border. It was first such exchange since November 2017, when the North shot at a defector fleeing across the border.
The latest incident increased tensions just Mr. Kim was reported to have emerged from a mysterious three-week absence from public view in the North — an absence that had fueled international speculation he was gravely ill or perhaps had died.
His absence at key public events, including an April 15 ceremony honoring the birthday of his late grandfather, Kim Il-sung, raised questions about whether the 36-year-old dictator had contracted COVID-19 or had undergone surgery for another health issue such as heart disease.
North Korean media last week published images claiming to show Mr. Kim attending a ceremony to mark the completion of a fertilizer factory near Pyongyang. U.S. officials later concluded that those images appeared to be genuine.
• Lauren Toms can be reached at lmeier@washingtontimes.com.
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