SEOUL - South Korean President Moon Jae-in travels to Pyongyang this week for his third summit with Kim Jong Un, looking to break the deadlock in nuclear talks between North Korea and the United States.
Moon -- whose own parents fled the North during the 1950-53 Korean War -- flies north on Tuesday for a three-day trip, following in the footsteps of his predecessors Kim Dae-jung in 2000 and mentor Roh Moo-hyun in 2007.
No details of the programme have been announced but Pyongyang is likely to pull out all the stops to create a good impression, with tens of thousands of people lining the streets to welcome him.
The visit comes after the North staged its “Mass Games” propaganda display for the first time in five years.
The new show featured imagery of Kim and Moon at their first summit in April in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula -- prompting the unusual sight of tens of thousands of North Koreans in the May Day Stadium applauding pictures of Seoul’s leader.
One diplomatic source predicted the visit would see “Kim and Moon together receiving the same sort of applause”.
But while the summit at the Panmunjom border truce village was high on headline-grabbing symbolism, with Moon stepping briefly into the North and the two sharing an extended one-to-one woodland chat, pressure is mounting for substantive progress.
Moon, who met Kim again in May, was instrumental in brokering the historic summit the following month between US President Donald Trump and Kim in Singapore, when Kim backed denuclearisation of the “Korean peninsula”. (AFP)