Inter-Korean talks become starting point for long process of building relationships

May 18, 2018 - PRLog -- The DPRK readjusted its time zone to match South Korea's, moving its clocks half an hour forward by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the country.

"The time-resetting is the first practical step taken after the historic third North-South summit meeting to speed up the process for the North and the South to become one and turn their different and separated things into the same and single ones," the Korean Central News Agency says.

On April 27, Kim Jong-un of North Korea and Moon Jae-in of the South for the first time met at the border point of Panmunjom and agreed to work to formally end the Korean War in 2018.

"The North and the South agreed to declare the end of war this year, […] replace the Armistice Agreement [of 1953] with a peace accord and actively promote the holding of North-South-US tripartite or North-South-China-US four-party talks for the building of durable and lasting peace mechanism," says the Panmunjom Declaration on Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of Korean Peninsula.

Meanwhile, the results of a survey conducted by the South Korean МВС channel on May 1 show a sharp increase in the popularity of the DPRK leader Kim Jong-un among South Koreans, which grew from 10% to 77.5% in a month and a half. Thus, the support for the North Korean leader in South Korea reached values comparable to the ranking of Moon Jae-in, which makes 86%.

"If this goes on, our next president will be Kim Jong-un," somberly joked Hong Jun-pyo, Chairman of the leading opposition Free Korean Party, representing the interests of the most conservative circles in the country.

Commenting on the significant warming of bilateral relations, Clive Williams from the Australian National University stressed the extreme importance of the summit.

"The meeting was important as it showed a willingness on the part of both leaders to break new ground in relation to the bilateral relationship. There is already peace on the peninsula in the sense that there is a lack of conflict. A peace agreement would however bring to an end what is effectively a ceasefire arrangement and replace it with a more positive framework with which to move forward," the expert told PenzaNews.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/65360-2018