S. Korean president lands in North for summit with Kim
PYONGYANG, North Korea — South Korean President Moon Jae-in landed in Pyongyang on Tuesday for his third summit this year with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Moon’s goals are lofty: To try to resolve deadlocked nuclear diplomacy, ease a decades-long military standoff and promote peace on a Korean Peninsula that many feared was close to war last year.
Moon said ahead of his trip that he will push for “irreversible, permanent peace” and for better dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington during “heart-to-heart” talks with Kim. Moon’s chief of staff, however, played down the chance that Moon’s summit with Kim will produce major progress in nuclear diplomacy.
A presidential plane carrying Moon left a military airport near Seoul on Tuesday morning and flew in an indirect route off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula before turning inland and arriving at Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport about 80 minutes later, Moon’s office said. A group of about 150 business, entertainment and sports leaders streamed onto the government aircraft before Moon left.
Moon was greeted at the Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang by thousands of North Koreans, lined up in neat rows and dressed in black suits and traditional hanboks. They waved bouquets of artificial flowers, the North Korean flag and also a white-and-blue flag with a map symbolizing a unified Korean Peninsula. North Korean soldiers and naval troops quick-marched into position to welcome Moon, and Kim Jong Un’s sister walked amid the preparations for receiving the South Korean president, according to South Korean media pool footage from the site.
Emergency crews throw supply lifeline to isolated Wilmington
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Throwing a lifeline to a city surrounded by floodwaters, emergency crews delivered food and water to Wilmington on Monday as rescuers picked up more people stranded by Hurricane Florence and the storm’s remnants took aim at the densely populated Northeast.
The death toll from Florence rose to at least 32, and crews elsewhere used helicopters and boats to rescue people trapped by still-rising rivers.
“Thank you,” a frazzled, shirtless Willie Schubert mouthed to members of a Coast Guard helicopter crew who plucked him and his dog Lucky from atop a house encircled by water in Pollocksville. It was not clear how long he had been stranded.
A day earlier, Wilmington’s entire population of 120,000 people was cut off by flooding. By midday Monday, authorities reopened a single unidentified road into the town, which stands on a peninsula. But it wasn’t clear if that the route would remain open as the Cape Fear River kept swelling. And officials did not say when other roads might be clear.
By wire sources
