North and South Korea Summit Is Short on Details, but Long on Theater

A handshake across the world’s most heavily fortified border. A lengthy one-on-one conversation on a bridge, beyond the range of microphones. Long-standing enemies on a divided peninsula calling for peace after a year of threats.

Friday’s summit between the leaders of North and South Korea was a master class in diplomatic choreography, with each scene arranged for its power as political theater and broadcast live. In a perilous standoff that has resisted solutions, it was these images that offered hope, much more than the actual results from the meeting — vague pledges to work toward nuclear disarmament and a peace treaty.

The dance between Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, and Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, began with a two-step: Each leader crossed the border into the other man’s country before they headed, hand in hand for a few moments, to a meeting in Panmunjom, the truce village at the center of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone.

From there, the talks unfolded in ways both surprisingly public and surprisingly profound. Few settings present a backdrop more dramatic than the DMZ, the bloodstained border that has divided the Korean Peninsula for 70 years and at which the leaders of North and South Korea have never previously met.

The highlight took place in the late afternoon, when Kim and Moon sat at the end of a blue bridge in a wooded area and engaged in what appeared to be deep conversation in full view of journalists’ cameras. They looked less like sworn enemies than members of the same family, separated by a generation. They spoke alone, without aides, for about 30 minutes, a face-to-face discussion that many would have thought impossible only a few months ago.

The world looked on and tried to figure out from their gestures and facial expressions how it was going. Moon appeared to do most of the talking, with Kim’s serious mien breaking into quick smiles here and there.

In details large and small, the men, each an expert in political messaging, made the most of their shared stage.

For Kim, it was something of a debut, in which he presented himself to a global audience without the protection of the state media he controls or the filter of visitors such as basketball star Dennis Rodman, one of the few outsiders who has met him.

Shifting his weight from side to side while speaking, he projected confidence in a husky voice — a voice usually heard only in prepared speeches broadcast in the North.

Many watching in South Korea saw him as a younger, more heavyset version of his grandfather, North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and some noted his heavy breathing and wondered about his health.

There were glimpses of the absolute authority he wields at home, too. Kim drove to lunch in a Mercedes limousine surrounded by 12 running bodyguards, for instance. And before he signed a guest book in the lobby of the conference hall, North Korean officials rushed to disinfect the desk and chair, as well as the book and a nearby pen. (Even after all that, Kim used a pen provided by his sister, Kim Yo Jong, the only woman in his delegation.)

At other moments, Kim and Moon savored the symbolism of their shared history: embracing in front of a painting of Mount Kumgang, a North Korean landmark cherished on both sides of the border, and admiring a wall of calligraphy in hangul, the Korean alphabet.

Summit meetings are typically staid and closed-door affairs. Held behind closed doors, details filter out only in jargon-filled communiqués intended to be oblique. Friday’s meeting was almost the opposite, largely held outdoors under a bright spring sun.

The encounter was a stark contrast with what came before: a secretive visit Kim made to Beijing last month under the cover of night, and two previous summit meetings in which Moon’s predecessors traveled to the hermetic North Korean capital, Pyongyang, to see Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.

The morning was filled with the classics of public diplomacy — broad smiles, long handshakes, even a joke about North Korean missile tests waking the South Korean president early in the morning. But sometimes there was a twist. There was the traditional pomp and pageantry of a South Korean honor guard, but the soldiers wore 19th-century imperial costumes, recalling a time before the peninsula was divided by ideology and war. As the day progressed, the scale of the meetings became more intimate. A large delegation of officials was whittled before lunch to six people — three South Koreans and three North Koreans, including Kim’s sister.

In a lighthearted moment — one of several — Moon noted how Kim’s sister stole the show when she visited South Korea for the Winter Olympics in February, prompting laughter from delegates — and a blush from Kim Yo Jong.

Even the clothing the two leaders wore projected a message. For Moon, a dark business suit was paired with a light blue tie that echoed the hue used in the Korean Unification Flag, which the countries use when competing together as a single team at international sporting events.

Kim wore an austere black Mao-style suit, a message to his citizens that despite being in enemy territory, he was still committed to the ideals — and dress — of Kim Il Sung, who ordered the 1950 invasion of the South that started the Korean War.

The day began with Kim stepping over the concrete slab that marks the border between the two countries, becoming the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South. (That achievement will soon be overshadowed by his meeting with Trump, when he becomes the first North Korean leader to meet with a sitting U.S. president.)

Inside Peace House, the building in which a meeting of top-level officials took place, even the décor was chosen for its political optics.

The table and chairs inside the meeting room were designed with a pattern evoking two bridges coming together, foreshadowing the bridge on which the two men would later hold their one-on-one conversation. At another moment infused with symbolism, the men replanted a tree with soil and water taken from both sides of the border. It was originally planted in the DMZ in 1953, the year the Korean War effectively ended in an armistice.

As the cameras rolled, two leaders unveiled a new plaque dedicated to “peace and prosperity.”

An army of journalists recorded the words. Just yards away, two actual armies stood at the ready, much as they have for 70 years.

North Korea’s state-run media had yet to report on the summit meeting as of Friday night. South Korean officials said the North was expected to broadcast edited footage from the meeting at a later time.

But Kim took the time to thank the journalists covering the meeting — a surprise gesture from a country where there is no freedom of press.

“If all North and South Koreans can travel freely on the path I took today, if Panmunjom becomes a symbol of peace, not of painful division, the two Koreas with their one blood, one language, one history and one culture will prosper for thousands of generations,” he said after signing the joint declaration with Moon. Kim’s wife, Ri Sol Ju, and the South Korean first lady, Kim Jung-sook, joined their husbands for dinner, where Kim spoke again. “We are protagonists of history,” he said. “We are shouldering missions that no one else is going to carry for us.”

The day ended with a farewell ceremony outdoors set to a mix of modern K-pop and traditional Korean folk music. Moon and Kim held hands as they stood looking on.