Korean Summit: Kim ready to visit South Korean president’s residence if invited

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said during his historic visit to South Korea on Friday, April 27, that he also harboured a wish to visit Cheong Wa Dae, where the official residence of the South Korean president Blue House is located, if Seoul invited him, the Korea Times reported.

Kim said this during attending his historic summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the border village of Panmumjeom in South Korea where the armistice halting the 1950-53 Korean War was signed.

In also a proposal which is generally unlikely from the leadership of the hermit kingdom, Kim proposed that the leaders of the two nations meet more.

Kim and Moon reviewed South Korea's traditional honour guards before the summit started. Moon told Kim that the traditional guard ceremony, which the South officials decided to hold as a mark of reciprocation to the North's doing the same in their earlier summits in the 2000s, was scaled down because of space constraints in Punmunjeom, according to chief presidential press secretary Yoon Young-chan who spoke to the media after the first round of the summit got over, the Korea Times report added.

The South Korean leader told Kim that he would show the latter a better ceremony if he came to Cheong Wa Dae. It was then when Kim expressed his wish, Korea Times reported.

Kim also told Moon that though he initially expected to see the summit in Pyongyang, but felt that the summit in Punmunjeom, a place which symbolises confrontation between the two countries, would seem better, the report further added.

"I saw the boundary stone marking the military demarcation line (which I crossed) was low. If many people cross it in future, one day it will disappear," the Korea Times report quoted Kim as saying.

Kim, who till last year was a terror for the world because of his reckless nuclear ambitions, took a pro-peace approach since earlier this year, also said the two countries' leaders needed to meet more frequently and not allow things return to square one, the report added.

Being aware of the scepticism over the summit in certain quarters as the two previous summits also didn't fulfil the expectations for peace between the two hostile neighbours, Kim said they did in 100 days what they could not be done in 11 years and a joint effort will prevent the situation from worsening.

Kim is set to meet US President Donald Trump next in May or June to continue with his diplomatic reconciliation with the international community.