If a historic meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un takes place, expect to hear three letters over and over again: DMZ.
That stands for Demilitarized Zone, the border between the two Koreas. It’s possible — maybe even likely — that the first-ever meeting between sitting heads of the US and North Korea will happen there.
“If things work out, there is a great celebration to be had on the site,” Trump said during a May 1 press conference alongside Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. “You’re there, you’re actually there.”
If Trump and Kim do chat at the DMZ, it will be the second time it served as the site for a historic encounter just this year. On April 27, Moon and Kim met for a day-long meeting that marked the first time a North Korean leader had set foot in South Korea in nearly 70 years.
It’s a symbolic place to hold the encounter. The US helped divide the two Koreas along the 38th parallel — using a National Geographic map — in the 1940s after World War II. And the DMZ, still guarded by South Korean and North Korean troops, is also the most prominent remnant of the Korean War. That conflict, which lasted from 1950 to 1953 and led to the deaths of some 5 million soldiers and civilians, technically continues to this day because the warring parties signed an armistice — not a peace treaty. The DMZ has separated the two countries since, and it’s considered one of the most dangerous places on earth.
That makes the border a dramatic place to hold the meeting, which is why the White House may prefer it over other locales.
“In choosing the DMZ, my fear is that the Trump administration is focused on optics, rather than substance or practicality,” Alexandra Bell, a nuclear expert at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told me. “Given that this is President Trump’s first nuclear rodeo, a less historically charged location might be a better pick.”
The DMZ is a symbol of war. Can it become a symbol of peace too?
To be sure, there’s no guarantee the meeting will be held at the DMZ. The US and North Korea have also considered the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar and Singapore as other venues. The two leaders, though, have not yet shown much interest — at least in public — in meeting in those two locations.
Wherever they gather, Kim and Trump will likely discuss a formal end to the Korean War. The US led a United Nations mission to support South Korea during that conflict, and retired Army Lt. Gen. William Harrison Jr. signed the armistice on behalf of those forces on July 27, 1953. That means the US — along with the two Koreas and China, which backed Pyongyang — must sign a peace treaty for the war to officially end.
They will also surely chat about dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program. That will be the thorniest issue, as the US wants to North Korea to give up its entire nuclear arsenal and stop all its efforts to build newer and more powerful weapons. The Kim regime, meanwhile, sees nuclear weapons as a safeguard against foreign invasion by South Korea or even the United States, and has previously given no indication whatsoever that it would be willing to give them up. And even Kim does agree to give up his nukes, the US and its allies will still face the tough challenge of verifying Pyongyang no longer has them.
What Trump and Kim possibly agree to at the meeting is much more important than where they talk. After all, finding a venue is just step one in a long and treacherous process toward peace between Washington and Pyongyang. But it would be quite the turn of events if the place that is the greatest symbol for war on the Korean Peninsula turns into a possible symbol for peace.