North Korea has diplomatic relations with 164 states. The country's foreign relations have been dominated by its conflict with South Korea and its historical ties to the Soviet Union. Both the government of North Korea and the government of South Korea claim to be the sole legitimate government of the whole of Korea. The de facto end of the Korean War left North Korea in a military confrontation with South Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
The history of South Korea formally begins with the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945. Noting that, South Korea and North Korea are entirely different countries, despite still being the same people and on the same peninsula.
Korean reunification is the potential unification of North Korea and South Korea into a single Korean sovereign state. The process towards reunification was started by the June 15th North–South Joint Declaration in June 2000, and was reaffirmed by the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula in April 2018, and the joint statement of U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un at the Singapore Summit in June 2018. In the Panmunjom Declaration, the two countries agreed to work towards a peaceful reunification of Korea in the future.
The Sunshine Policy (Korean: 햇볕정책) is the theoretical basis for South Korea's foreign policy towards North Korea. Its official title is The Reconciliation and Cooperation Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북화해협력정책), and it is also known as The Operational Policy Towards the North (Korean: 대북운영정책) and The Embracing Policy (Korean: 포용정책).
Korean Air Flight 858 was a scheduled international passenger flight between Baghdad, Iraq, and Seoul, South Korea. On 29 November 1987, the aircraft flying that route exploded in mid-air upon the detonation of a bomb planted inside an overhead storage bin in the airplane's passenger cabin by two North Korean agents.
The June 15th North–South Joint Declaration was adopted between leaders of North Korea and South Korea in June 2000 after various diplomatic meetings between the North and South. As a result of the talks, numerous separated families and relatives from the North and the South had meetings with their family members in Pyongyang and Seoul.
Formerly a single nation that was annexed by Japan in 1910, the Korean Peninsula has been divided into North Korea and South Korea since the end of World War II on 2 September 1945. The two governments were founded in the two regions in 1948, leading to the consolidation of division. The two countries became opposite and engaged in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 which ended in an armistice agreement but without a peace treaty. North Korea is a one-party totalitarian state run by the Kim dynasty. South Korea was formerly governed by a succession of military dictatorships, save for a brief one-year democratic period from 1960 to 1961, until thorough democratization in 1987, after which direct elections were held. Both nations claim the entire Korean peninsula and outlying islands. Both nations joined the United Nations in 1991 and are recognized by most member states. Since the 1970s, both nations have held informal diplomatic dialogues in order to ease military tensions. In 2000, President Kim Dae-jung became the first President of South Korea to visit North Korea, 55 years after the peninsula was divided.
The Pungsan, Phungsan, Korean Phungsan, or Poongsan is a breed of hunting dog from Korea, named for originating in Kim Hyong Gwon County, formerly Phungsan county. They were bred in the Kaema highlands of what is now North Korea, and were traditionally used as hunting dogs. The dog is a rare breed, and is sometimes smuggled over the North Korea–China border. The dog was made a national monument of North Korea in April 1956, and the national dog of the DPRK in 2014.
Inter-Korean summits are meetings between the leaders of North and South Korea. To date, there have been five such meetings so far, three of them being in Pyongyang, with another two in Panmunjom. The importance of these summits lies in the lack of formal communication between North and South Korea, which makes discussing political and economic issues difficult. The summits' agendas have included topics such as the ending of the 1950-53 war, the massive deployment of troops at the DMZ, the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea, and human rights issues.
2000 inter-Korean summit was a meeting between South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong Il, which took place in Pyongyang from June 13 to June 15, 2000. It was the first inter-Korean summit since the Korean War 1950-1953.
Regarding the first inter-Korean summit, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kim Dae-Jung for his work for democracy and human rights in North and South Korea in East Asia in general. Kim Dae Jung's Sunshine Policy for reconciliation with North Korea was recognized.
2018 in North Korea was marked by attempts by the government to develop its international relationships, particularly in regards to South Korea. In February, North Korean athletes marched alongside their South Korean counterparts under the Korean Unification Flag at the 2018 Seoul Olympic Games. North Korea's Kim Jong-Un met with South Korea's Moon Jae-in three times during the year. Kim also travelled to Beijing to meet with China's paramount leader Xi Jinping, and to Singapore for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.
The April 2018 inter-Korean summit took place on 27 April 2018 on the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area, between Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea, and Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea and Supreme Leader of North Korea. The summit was the third inter-Korean summit - the first in eleven years. It was also the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953 that a North Korean leader entered the South's territory; President Moon also briefly crossed into the North's territory.
The 2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit, commonly known as the Singapore Summit, was a summit meeting between North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, held at the Capella Hotel, Sentosa, Singapore, on 12 June 2018. It was the first-ever meeting between leaders of North Korea and the United States. They signed a joint statement, agreeing to security guarantees for North Korea, new peaceful relations, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, recovery of soldiers' remains, and follow-up negotiations between high-level officials. Both leaders also met separately with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The inter-Korean Peace House is a venue for peace talks between North and South Korea. The building is situated in the Joint Security Area on the south side of the Military Demarcation Line bisecting the area.
Suh Hoon is a South Korean government official who served as the Director of National Security Office from 2020 to 2022 and previously as the director of the National Intelligence Service from 2017 to 2020.
The Peace Treaty on Korean Peninsula is a proposed settlement to formally end military hostilities on the Korean Peninsula as a follow-up to the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement implemented by the United Nations after the Korean War. During the inter-Korean summit on April 27, 2018, Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in signed the Panmunjom Declaration; the declaration involved an agreement about mutual efforts and action items for transforming the armistice agreement into a peace treaty with the cooperation of the United States and China. During the 2018 Trump–Kim summit, US president Donald Trump and Kim signed a Joint Statement which reaffirmed the Panmunjom Declaration.
The May 2018 inter-Korean summit was the second inter-Korean summit in 2018. On 26 May, North Korean state chairman Kim Jong Un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in met again in the joint Security Area, this time on the North Korean side in the Inter-Korean Peace House in the Unification Pavilion. The meeting took two hours, and unlike other summits it had not been publicly announced beforehand. Photos released by South Korea's presidential office showed Moon arriving at the northern side of the Panmunjom truce village and shaking hands with Kim's sister, Kim Yo-jong, before sitting down with Kim for their summit. Moon was accompanied by Suh Hoon, Director of the National Intelligence Service of South Korea, while Kim was joined by Kim Yong-chol, a former military intelligence chief who is now a vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party's central committee tasked with inter-Korean relations. The meeting was largely centered around North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's upcoming summit with US President Donald Trump. Kim and Moon also embraced before Moon returned to South Korea. On 27 May, Moon stated in a public address that he and Kim agreed to meet again at "anytime and anyplace" without any formality and that the North Korean leader once again pledged to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula in accordance with the Panmunjom Declaration.
The September 2018 inter-Korean summit was the third and final inter-Korean summit in the 2018-19 Korean peace process.
The 2007 North–South Summit Declaration is the declaration for the development of inter-Korean relations and peace and prosperity. It is the declaration agreed upon between South Korea's 16th president Roh Moo-hyun and North Korea's representative Kim Jong Il at the 2007 inter-Korean summit. It is often called the 10.4 South-North Summit Declaration or the 2007 North-South Summit Declaration, and it is also referred to as the 10.4 Declaration. On October 4, 2007, at 1 pm, the North and South Korean leaders signed jointly at the Paekhwawon State Guesthouse, Pyongyang.
The 2018−19 Korean peace process was initiated in order to resolve the long-running Korean conflict and denuclearize Korea. International concern about North Korea's nuclear weapons came to a head in 2017, when they posed a direct threat to the United States. At the same time, Moon Jae-in was elected president of South Korea with the promise of returning to the Sunshine Policy, favoring good relations with North Korea. A series of summits were held between North Korea's Kim Jong-un, South Korea's Moon, and Donald Trump of the United States. Trump became the first sitting US President to meet a North Korean leader and to enter North Korean territory. Kim became the first North Korean leader to enter South Korean territory. Moon became the first South Korean President to give a speech in North Korea. In parallel to this, a number of cultural exchanges began. Tensions were lowered on both sides of the DMZ.
