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Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
World
Asharq Al-Awsat

Pyongyang: Inter-Korean Summit Will Be a 'New Milestone'

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shake hands at the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, April 27, 2018. Korea Summit Press Pool/Pool via Reuters

North Korea said on Saturday the inter-Korean summit a day earlier will be a "new milestone" in bringing about joint prosperity and a turning point for the Korean peninsula.

The North's central news agency released the joint statement North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced on Friday after the first summit in more than a decade between the two Koreas.

The summit took place in the truce village of Panmunjom, a cluster of buildings in what is known as the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, a strip of land along the 38th parallel that divides the Korean Peninsula.

Kim and Moon had pledged to work for "complete denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula and agreed on a common goal of a "nuclear-free" peninsula.

The Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the North's ruling Workers' Party, devoted the first four of its six pages to the event, carrying a total of 60 photos, 15 of them on page one.

When Kim stepped over the military demarcation line that divides the peninsula he became the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the Korean War hostilities ceased in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

He then persuaded Moon to step into the North -- a fact reported by KCNA on Saturday - and the two leaders shared a day of smiles, intimate moments, and a half-hour-long one-on-one conversation.

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