GOYANG, South Korea —  North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has laid the foundations for a meeting with President Trump as soon as next month, signaling a willingness to discuss denuclearization and trying to dispel the idea that he’s an unreliable “little rocket man.”

In an astonishing turn of events, a beaming Kim on Friday stepped across the border into South Korea for a day of talks that began and ended with him holding hands with Southern President Moon Jae-in.

They talked, they joked, they walked, they ate, and, when they signed a joint statement pledging to work toward their “common goal” of denuclearizing their peninsula, they hugged.

“Today we saw Kim Jong Un’s charm offensive in action,” said Duyeon Kim, a visiting fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul. “He’s exerting his influence and trying to grab the spotlight with a big smile. But behind that smile, he was wearing his game face.”

Indeed, with Friday’s historic summit and the bold, if vague, pledge to discuss giving up his nuclear program, Kim is trying to rewrite the public narrative about him and ease some of the outside pressure on him.

“Good things are happening, but only time will tell!” Trump, who has championed a “maximum pressure” campaign against Kim, tweeted early Friday morning in Washington.

The warmth of the meeting and the positive images beamed onto TV screens across the globe have set the stage for Kim to meet with Trump at the end of May or early June. Trump has said he will go to the talks only if they promise to be “fruitful,” a bar that likely was met with Friday’s meetings.

[Full text of the Panmunjom Declaration]

Kim and Moon Friday signed a three-page “Panmunjom Declaration,” named after the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas where it was forged, stating that “South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.” 

The two Koreas agreed “to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community” in that endeavor, it said.

But the agreement was short on details, and the phrase “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” will ring alarm bells in Washington because it implies that nuclear weapons will not be allowed in South Korea, either.

The United States, South Korea’s security ally, regularly sends nuclear-capable aircraft and ships to the South during military exercises, so this clause will raise suspicions that Pyongyang is calling for a significant change in the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

Moon had previously said that Kim would not insist on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the South, and there was no mention of this in Friday’s agreement. 

Kim did not mention the word “denuclearization” when he appeared before the press after signing the agreement, although he stayed on message throughout.

“We will work to make sure that the agreement bears good results, by closely communicating to ensure that the failure to implement North-South agreements in the past will not be repeated,” Kim said, standing at a podium in front of cameras.

Previous inter-Korean agreements have also pledged denuclearization, and there is a significant amount of skepticism in Washington and Tokyo, in particular, about whether this time will be any different. 

[Trump hails “historic” Korea meeting but leaves questions about next step]

That Kim signed his name to a statement that even included the word “denuclearization” marked significant progress after a year of threats and missile launches that brought the specter of war back to the Korean Peninsula.

And Friday’s agreement marks a significant change from Kim’s previous statements that he would continue to expand his nuclear arsenal, said Patrick McEachern, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington.

Instead, the two leaders established a framework for plausible resolution of the most pressing issues on the peninsula, he said.

“This is a great start and should be cause for cautious optimism,” said McEachern, who worked on North Korea in the State Department. “The public conversation should now shift from speculation on whether North Korea would consider denuclearization to how South Korea and the United States can advance this denuclearization pledge in concrete steps.”

Even the most optimistic analysts were surprised at the scope of the agreement.

“You can’t ask for more than that,” said John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul and a keen proponent of diplomatic engagement. 

“Yes, there are still questions about how to guarantee North Korea’s security on the path to denuclearization. But I’m surprised they would go this far at this early stage, that Kim Jong Un didn’t save this for his meeting with Trump,” Delury added.

Kim and Moon also agreed to work to turn the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty that would officially bring the war to a close. 

“South and North Korea will actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” the joint statement said in English, as officially translated by the South’s presidential Blue House.

The Korean language version used the words “peace treaty” — an important distinction. “Treaty” generally refers to a piece of paper while “regime” means a system for peace, such as stopping military activities.

“Bringing an end to the current unnatural state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is a historical mission must not be delayed any further,” the statement said.

The United States signed the armistice agreement 65 years ago on behalf of the South Korean side, and, shortly after the announcement, Trump tweeted, “KOREAN WAR TO END!”

[As Kim crosses into South Korea, a historic summit hangs on the North’s nuclear intentions ]

The two sides also plan to set up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, a city just over the northern side of the border, and Moon said he would visit Pyongyang this fall. Kim said he would happily travel to Seoul if invited.

The signing ceremony came at the end of an extraordinary day full of words and gestures that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of the year.

At 9:30 a.m. Friday, Kim came out of the main building on the northern side of the military demarcation line that has divided the Korean Peninsula for 65 years and walked right up to the line.

Moon was waiting there for him, hand outstretched, and Kim became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea. 

“When you crossed the military border for the first time, Panmunjom became a symbol of peace, not a symbol of division,” Moon said to Kim later.

Showing his penchant for bold and surprising moves, Kim then asked Moon to step back across the line with him, and he did. For a brief moment, the leaders stood in North Korean territory, holding hands.

The moment was broadcast live across the country, with commuters standing in train stations and teachers stopping classes so their students could watch the moment.

Moon and Kim spent hours together on Friday, in formal talks and in a half-hour-long private discussion on park benches outside in the sun, surrounded by birdsong. They threw soil and water from both Koreas onto a pine tree planted in the demilitarized zone to mark the occasion.

[At Korean summit in DMZ, ‘deranged’ ax murders still cast a shadow  ]

At one stage during the day, Kim assured Moon he would not have to wake up early any more — a reference to the fact that North Korea’s missile launches usually happened at about dawn — and he even referred to the North Koreans who have escaped to the South. He acknowledged that the North’s infrastructure network is far inferior to the South’s.

As part of his charm offensive, Kim appealed to Moon as a fellow Korean, highlighting their shared culture and framing their problems as ones that only they, as Koreans, could solve.

Then, after a dinner that was full of symbolism, from the noodles that came from Pyongyang to the fish brought in from Moon’s home town, they sat together in the DMZ to watch a show of lights and music. This culminated with the two Korean leaders standing hand in hand, watching as photos of them from throughout the day were beamed onto the building from which the South usually keeps a watchful eye on the North.  

The outcome was as good as Kim could have hoped for, said Christopher Green, senior adviser for the Korean Peninsula at the International Crisis Group.

“For a tyrant ruling 25 million people in a corner of East Asia, this is a big deal,” he said.

Min Joo Kim contributed to this report.

Read more

South Korea is sparing no effort to make summit with Kim a made-for-TV success

North Korea is setting the mood for a summit with Trump. And that is progress.

Under pressure to show results on North Korea, Trump the showman can’t stop raising the bar for success

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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This post has been updated.

Scott Pruitt gave little ground Thursday as he testified before two House panels about controversial spending and management decisions he has made while at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency, blaming aides for exorbitant spending and saying career officials signed off on other controversial decisions.

Bolstered by Republican lawmakers, who praised his push to unravel Obama-era regulations and cut the agency’s workforce, Pruitt suggested that the censure he’s faced in recent months stems largely from opponents who want to stall President Trump’s environmental policies.

“Those who have attacked the EPA and attacked me are doing so because they want to derail the president’s agenda. I’m not going to let that happen,” Pruitt told members of the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee during the morning. “A lie doesn’t become true just because it appears on the front page of the newspaper.”

Whether Pruitt’s composed performance will be enough to preserve his job remains unclear, but there were few signs Thursday that House Republicans were ready to abandon him. Few GOP lawmakers — among them, Rep. Ryan Costello (Ill.), who is retiring, and Rep. Leonard Lance (N.J.), who is locked in a tough reelection fight — criticized Pruitt during more than five hours of questioning.

Three White House officials said Pruitt’s testimony — while “not good,” in the words of one — did not deliver a knockout blow to his tenure. The EPA chief has little support among senior aides there, and the president has voiced more concern as allegations and investigations involving Pruitt have accelerated. Multiple probes are underway by the agency’s inspector general, as well as by the House Oversight Committee, the Government Accountability Office and the White House itself.

Trump did not watch much of the administrator’s testimony live, one official with direct knowledge of his schedule said, but will likely view segments later along with media coverage.

Democratic lawmakers pushed Pruitt hard on several fronts, prompting him to concede that he had known in advance of an aide’s pay hike, that he had not sought an ethics ruling on his rental of a condo from a lobbyist and that a costly soundproof phone booth installed in his office did not constitute the kind of secure communications facility commonly used by federal officials for classified discussions.

“I’m not afraid to admit that it has been a learning process,” he said.

Pruitt repeatedly faulted staff for spending decisions that have drawn intense heat and denied that he had reassigned or demoted anyone who questioned those expenditures. Several people — including Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, Kevin Chmielewski — have charged that they faced retaliation after challenging plans to spend taxpayer funds on first-class travel, office upgrades and other perks for him.

The EPA chief insisted there was “no truth” to such reports, adding, “I’m not aware of that ever happening.”

He also said he had no idea that his request to install a secure phone line in his office would lead to the customized phone booth costing $43,000. “I was not aware of the approval of the $43,000,” Pruitt said at one point, “and if I had known about it, congressman, I would not have approved it.”

Midafternoon, Pruitt moved over to a House Appropriations subcommittee and was again pressed on how that phone booth came about. The decision to install it “should not have been made,” he said.

Referring more broadly to management and spending missteps at the agency, Pruitt told the panel, “If there are processes that have not been followed internally . . . I commit to make those changes prospectively.”

He addressed questions about his first-class travel by saying that, even with ongoing security concerns, he had returned this year to flying coach. “I recently made changes to that because I felt like, from an optics and perception standpoint, it was creating a distraction,” he said.

He said he was aware of the move to give agency senior counsel Sarah Greenwalt a raise but did not push for it. She and another staffer received significant raises this spring over the objections of officials in the White House Personnel Office. “I was aware of one of those individuals” receiving a raise, Pruitt told Costello.

Greenwalt got a 52 percent increase last month, while Millan Hupp, director of scheduling and advance, got a 33 percent boost. The Washington Post first reported last week that Greenwalt had emailed a colleague in EPA’s human resources department that the raises had been “discussed” with the administrator in advance. Each woman had worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma before coming to Washington.

Earlier, when Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) asked Pruitt if he had authorized chief of staff Ryan Jackson to sign the raises, Pruitt had replied, “I was not aware of the amount, nor was I aware of the [Personnel Office] process not being respected.” He said he had delegated authority to Jackson to review and approve such personnel actions — a move that was documented by a March 2017 memo the agency released Thursday.

Jackson reversed both raises on April 5, according to EPA documents.

While Costello and Lance bore in on his spending on security and travel, other Republicans lauded his aggressive actions to roll back regulations, most prominently the Obama administration’s signature effort to cut carbon emissions from power plants.

“The greatest sin you’ve committed, if any, is you’ve actually done what President Trump ran on, won on and what he’s commissioned you to do,” Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Pruitt during the first hearing.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) mounted a defense on Pruitt’s behalf. “You’re not the first person to be the victim, for lack of a better term, of Washington politics,” the lawmaker told him. Referring to the fact that the administrator frequently traveled in first class during his first year at EPA, Barton inquired, “Is it illegal to fly first class?”

Pruitt said that those tickets had been approved by the agency’ travel and security offices, prompting Barton to reply, “But it’s not illegal. It may look bad, but it’s not illegal.”

Rep. David B. McKinley (R-WVa.) described the myriad allegations Pruitt faces as “a classic display of innuendo and McCarthyism,” adding that he was disappointed his colleagues across the aisle couldn’t restrict their questions to ones about policy. “Some just can’t resist the limelight, the opportunity to grandstand,” he accused.

The EPA’s press office issued a news release shortly before the second hearing, with quotes from Pruitt’s congressional supporters, including Cramer’s comment: “I never cease to be impressed by the level of detail you know.”

But Democrats were unsparing in their criticism. Tonko, the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee’s top Democrat, delivered a fusillade as Pruitt looked on impassively. After ticking off several allegations about the administrator’s personal financial dealings and professional decisions, the lawmaker said, “In almost all cases, the more we have learned, the worse they get.”
He concluded by telling Pruitt, “You have failed as a steward of American taxpayer dollars and of the environment.”

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), the Energy and Commerce’s top Democrat, was even harsher. “You are unfit to hold public office, and you are undeserving of the public trust,” he told Pruitt.

Pallone pressed Pruitt on whether he had retaliated against employees who questioned some of his spending decisions. “Has it always been your practice to fire people who disagree with you?” he asked.

Pruitt rebutted the charge. “I don’t ever recall a conversation to that end,” he said.

The administrator did retreat some during an exchange with Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). Previously, EPA officials had likened the privacy phone booth to a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) that Pruitt needed for secure conversations with the White House and other officials. A recent GAO report did not assess the booth’s security merits but said Pruitt violated federal spending laws by spending more than $5,000 upgrading his office without advance notice to Congress.

The phone booth “is actually not a SCIF,” Pruitt said, even as he rejected the GAO’s conclusion. He acknowledged that he has only used the booth sparingly. “It’s for confidential communications, and it’s rare,” he added.

At times, he professed to be unfamiliar with some of the technology his aides had installed in his office.

“What is a biometric lock?” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) asked.

“I don’t know,” the administrator replied. “I just put a code in.”

Read more:

First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure

‘A factory of bad ideas’: How Scott Pruitt undermined his mission at EPA

Pruitt’s round-the-clock security has cost taxpayers nearly $3 million

Pruitt unveils controversial ‘transparency’ rule limiting what research EPA can use