Washington Examiner:
TIME TO TALK: As the 2018 Winter Games, dubbed the “Peace Olympics” by South Korea, came to a close yesterday, President Moon Jae-in called for the U.S. to adopt a more flexible response to North Korean overtures for possible future talks. “The United States needs to lower its bar for dialogue and the North too must show its willingness to denuclearize,” Moon said while meeting China’s vice premier in Seoul on Sunday, according to Yonhap News Agency. “It is important so that the U.S. and North Korea may sit down face to face.”
The call from Moon came hours before he met with North Korea’s chief representative Kim Yong Chol for about an hour in Pyeongchang. “Kim said the door remains open for dialogue with the United States,” a South Korean official told reporters. Seoul believes that Kim Yong Chol was the mastermind behind two attacks in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans. He was in South Korea for the end of the Olympics, and could be seen sitting in the same VIP box as the President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trumpand U.S. Korean Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks at the closing ceremonies.
WAIT AND SEE: White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, also in Pyeongchang for the end of the games, said, “We will see if Pyongyang’s message today, that it is willing to hold talks, represents the first steps along the path to denuclearization. In the meantime, the United States and the world must continue to make clear that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are a dead end…”
