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Kim and Moon to meet at military demarcation line before summit

Published April 26, 2018 Updated April 26, 2018 11:09am

Moon will greet his visitor at the concrete blocks that mark the border between the two Koreas in the Demilitarized Zone, the chief of the South's presidential secretariat Im Jong-seok said.

When Kim steps over the line he will become the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the Korean War ended 65 years ago.

The meeting will be only the third of its kind, following summits in Pyongyang in 2000 and 2007, and the high point so far of a rapid diplomatic rapprochement on the tension-wracked peninsula, ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump.

The North's nuclear arsenal will be high on the agenda. Pyongyang has made rapid progress in its weapons development under Kim, who inherited power from his father in 2011.

Last year it carried out its sixth nuclear blast, by far its most powerful to date, and launched missiles capable of reaching the US mainland, sending tensions soaring as Kim and Trump traded personal insults and threats of war.

Moon seized on the South's Winter Olympics as an opportunity to try to broker dialogue between them.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2018