Inter-Korea Summit: Kim Jong Un Greets Moon Jae-In, Will Discuss Denuclearization

South Korean President Moon Jae-in arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday for this year’s third inter–Korea summit. Moon plans to make more tangible gains toward a Korean peace treaty and discuss denuclearization in depth with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The summit could also pave way for closer inter-Korean ties through other cooperative projects.

Kim and Moon embraced and flashed wide smiles, after the latter and his wife Kim Jung-sook walked out of the presidential plane Tuesday morning. They were welcomed with a special ceremony by a military honor guard who called Moon "Your Excellency." Post the ceremony, the South Korean president shook hands with people in the cheering crowd, some waving Korean unification flags, Korean Times reported.

The entire ceremony lasted about 15 minutes before the two leaders drove off in a caravan of black cars. They then held a car parade along Pyongyang streets where they were welcomed by citizens wearing suits and traditional dresses, waving flowers and applauding.

Post the parade, the leaders arrived at a guesthouse in Pyongyang where they were expected to have talks over lunch from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. local time (2.30 a.m. to 4 a.m. EDT).

Before flying to Pyongyang, Moon had said, "What I want to achieve is peace. Not a tentative change that could be volatile depending on the international situation, but an irreversible, permanent and unwavering peace, regardless of what might happen in the global arena.”

Moon, who met Kim in May, was instrumental in brokering the historic summit between President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader in Singapore, when the latter supported denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

"He (Moon) believes that improved inter-Korean relations have some role in facilitating US-DPRK talks as well as solving the North Korean nuclear problem," Moon’s special adviser on foreign affairs Moon Chung-in said Monday.

"I am willing to talk candidly with Chairman Kim Jong Un to find a balance between the US' demands for denuclearization and North Korea's request for dropping hostile policies and enforcing measures to secure their safety. I believe that the denuclearization issue can be progressed at a rapid pace if the two leaders face each other again and talk,” Moon said Monday, CNN reported.

However, Frank Aum, senior expert on North Korea at the United States Institute of Peace, believes Moon was finding it difficult to balance the act of pursuing better economic cooperation with the North while not doing anything that might disrupt the U.S.-South Korea alliance, PBS News Hour reported.

“I think the problem right now for South Korea is that it’s frustrated that it can’t do more in terms of inter-Korean cooperation because of the lack of progress in U.S.-DPRK (North Korea) negotiations,” he said.

As far as the position of other nations were concerned, Lisa Collins, who works with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. and Asian countries generally supported warming relations between Koreas as there was coordination in the process.

“If actions taken by South Korea to improve relations with North Korea undermine the current (U.S.) policy towards North Korea — that might be seen as counterproductive,” she said.