WASHINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Friday's high-profile inter-Korean summit concluded with a joint commitment to denuclearization and permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula, showing positive signs for the planned meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Un.
Worldwide, the meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on the South Korean side of the Panmunjom truce village that divides the two Koreas following the 1950-53 Korean War, is regarded as a historic moment.
BEST NEWS ALL YEAR
Chairman of the New York-headquartered think tank Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer hailed the outcome of the inter-Korean summit as the "best news you're going to hear all year."
Calling it "the first significant unreservedly positive geopolitical development of the year," Bremmer said: "It's hard to see the United States credibly threatening military preemption when peace is breaking out across the peninsula, which is precisely the point."
"Ultimately it's a win for everybody," he noted.
In the eyes of Richard Haass, president of the U.S. think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), implementing the meeting's consensus may mean "there will be less disarray in the world."
Haass called the Moon-Kim meeting an "extraordinary development on the Korean Peninsula" that helps defuse tensions that might slide into military confrontation.
The meeting also came as a relief to both Pyongyang and Seoul, experts believe.
Scott A. Snyder, CFR's senior analyzer on the Korean Peninsula, highlighted the fact that Kim is the first DPRK top leader to cross into the technically South Korean territory.
"This shift from provocation to dialogue has been a hallmark" of Pyongyang's diplomacy, he said, adding the move could generate public support in the South of the peninsula for warmer relations with the North.
Above all, the successful inter-Korean summit is a "major breakthrough," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.
"Bringing them together is a good sign that negotiations are starting in good faith and each side has confidence in the process," he commented.
The Panmunjom Declaration from the inter-Korean summit, said Troy Stangarone, senior director of the Washington-based non-profit Korea Economic Institute on policy research, "lays out a pathway forward for the two Koreas if properly implemented," setting up "a common framework for both sides to work from on rebuilding inter-Korean relations."
POSITIVE FOR TRUMP-KIM MEETING
The inter-Korean summit preluded Kim's meeting with Trump.
Trump on Friday said options for the meeting location were reduced to two or three sites, and the United States will set up the meeting "very shortly."
Former U.S. diplomat Mintaro Oba said "the inter-Korean summit is like the opening move in chess."
"How you play it sets up the other possible moves that come after it," he said. "So the inter-Korean summit's significance lies primarily in what atmosphere it creates and what expectations it reinforces heading into the next move, which is the Trump-Kim summit."
CFR's Snyder said Seoul recognizes that improvements in inter-Korean relations will be ultimately tied to any progress in the U.S.-DPRK relations.
He added that a U.S.-DPRK summit will be "high-risk, high-reward" for both Kim and Trump, because failure could entrench their previous opposing stances and lead to confrontation.
Currently, experts believe that Seoul is seeking to be the "axle" to keep the wheels of inter-Korean and U.S.-DPRK relations moving toward a comprehensive settlement of peace and denuclearization.
WASHINGTON NEEDS TO MANAGE EXPECTATIONS
Some experts see questions left unsolved in the Moon-Kim meeting.
"What matters in the context of (U.S. relations with South Korea) is whether the South hangs tough and does not offer up economic incentives that firstly, reward the North for promises rather than actions and secondly, ignore U.S. concerns, above all the nuclear and ballistic missile programs," CFR's Haass said.
Snyder believes that reviving inter-Korean economic cooperation including large-scale projects like the Kaesong Industrial Zone should remain off limits under United Nations Security Council resolutions "until there is tangible evidence" of Pyongyang's commitment to denuclearization.
Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, predicted that with Pyongyang, Washington will "seek to broaden and deepen the meaning of denuclearization and set a timetable for elimination of the weapons, with benchmarks, in exchange for sanctions relief and diplomatic relations."
"This will be a difficult negotiation, particularly because of the need for adequate verification, which the North has always resisted," he added.
In addition, experts believe that other regional actors and interests could also step in. For example, in his earlier meeting with Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged Washington to include the DPRK's missile capability and Japanese abductees in the Trump-Kim talks.
Ryan Hass, a Brookings Institution scholar on Asia issue, suggested Washington readjust its expectations for the Kim-Trump meeting.
"It's going to be difficult for Trump to exceed either the hopefulness of the Moon-Kim meeting or the standards on verification set by JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) Iran deal," he said, it "would be wise for White House to manage expectations, rather than inflate them."
(Matthew Rusling from Washington contributed to the story.)
