Trump suggests demilitarised zone in South Korea as venue for talks with Kim

United States President Donald Trump on Monday floated the idea of using the demilitarised zone in South Korea as a potential venue for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong un following the example set last week by the leaders of the two Koreas.

The demilitarised zone is a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula. It is established by the provisions of the Korean Armistice Agreement to serve as a buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea.

“Numerous countries are being considered for the meeting, but would Peace House/Freedom House, on the Border of North and South Korea, be a more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third-party country? Just asking!” Trump said in a tweet.

The discussion comes following dramatic images of Kim greeting South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, at the line of demarcation between North and South, and sitting down with him in the Peace House, a three-story, gray stone edifice built by South Korea to hold meetings with officials from the North.

White House officials have been discussing sites as far-flung as Singapore and Mongolia for the planned meeting between Trump and Kim. Officials had privately played down the possibility of the Peace House, the New York Times reported.

Trump has accepted an invitation to meet the North Korean leader. This would be the first ever meeting between leaders of the US and North Korea.

The date and venue of the meeting has not been officially announced. In the last few days, Trump has said that the venue has been zeroed down to two place. The meeting is expected to be held fairly soon.

The South Korean government said Kim told Moon that North Korea would relinquish its nuclear weapons if the US pledged not to attack it and endorsed a peace treaty formally ending the military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, the report said.

A Trump-Kim meeting in the Peace House, which sits just south of the line of demarcation between North and South Korea, would be laden with symbolism. It would also give Trump the chance to get to a place he missed the last time he was in South Korea. Heavy fog forced his helicopter to turn around shortly before he was to land in the Demilitarised Zone, the report said.