North Korea could have purpose for hospitality shown to Moon

President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pose for photographs with the joint statement in Pyongyang, North Korea, Wednesday. Joint Press Corps/Reuters

By Kim Yoo-chul, Joint Press Corps

SEOUL/PYONGYANG ― President Moon Jae-in is in Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea, for a three-day summit with Kim Jong-un. The North Korean people just can't seem to get enough of Moon.

The North's Kim greeted Moon with a warm embrace, handshake, hug and a military band in addition to a rapturous welcome from a cheering crowd at the Sunan International Airport as Moon stepped off the presidential plane at the airport.

A red carpet was ready. Moon reviewed a North Korean honor guard for 15 minutes.

Throngs of people waited for Moon's arrival to the North Korean capital with people lining the main streets of Pyongyang everywhere he went on the first day there. Clean streets and some skyscrapers were seen as the motorcade passed Ryomyong Street, a new residential district for middle-class residents opened last year under Kim's initiative to modernize the city.

The huge excitement in North Korea for the visit of the South Korean leader has never been this high, according to chief presidential press secretary Yoon Young-chan. It was the first time that the North's Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju greeted a visiting head of a state at the Sunan airport.

The first and second round of their third summit took place at the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) headquarters where Kim's main office is located. Opening up the WPK headquarters for the head of a state for meetings was also a first.

After a fancy banquet and musical performances on Moon's first day there, he moved to a new dining destination along the North Korean capital's Taedong River including an area for indoor fishing, Wednesday.

Such hospitality represents a staging post on the journey to peace on the Korean Peninsula, according to political analysts.

"It's understandable that Moon would like to be involved, given the South's proximity to the North. I feel that President Moon can serve as a positive bridge between Washington and Pyongyang. As a third party, he can both support progress and help diffuse challenges to the progress of nuclear disarmament talks," Ariel Goldfarb, a professor at Northwestern University, Chicago, said in an email.

Goldfarb, also a managing director at CurtisAlan Partners, a top-tier consultancy in the United States, said the apparent sincere hospitality was also a response by the North's Kim to praise Moon's efforts to facilitate and mediate denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang.

"Kim has a thirst for change. By letting President Moon into the newly-built Pyongyang Taedong River Seafood Restaurant, North Korea wants to show its commitment to the international community in how its government works to improve the living standards of Pyongyang residents," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

President Moon met Kim in April and May this year. Since then, he played a key role in brokering the June summit in Singapore between U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim.

But because the Singapore summit failed to produce a specific timeline on when and how the North would shut down its nuclear weapons programs, there has been very slow progress toward the U.S. goal of the North relinquishing its nuclear warheads.

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