US President Donald Trump (AP-Yonhap)


South Korea has suspended visits to the truce village of Panmunjom in Gyeonggi Province from late October through early November, a move that has stirred speculation of a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
부모님신용불량 The Unification Ministry confirmed Monday that its special tour program to the Joint Security Area will be paused for the period surrounding the summit, which will be held on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 in Gy 취급품목 eongju, North Gyeongsang Province.
“There will be no Unification Ministry-operated special field trips to Panmunjom from late October to early November,” ministry spokesperson Koo Byoung-sam 개인회생서류 said at a press briefing, adding that inquiries should be directed to the United Nations Command, which oversees the southern half of the Joint Security Area.
The government suspension repo 햇살론 승인기간 rtedly follows a similar decision by the UNC to halt its own Panmunjom visitor program during the same period. The UNC, which manages the delicate border zone where the two Koreas technically remain a 디딤돌대출과 보금자리론 t war, has not disclosed the reason for the pause.
These visits have been restricted to “policy customers” — a term referring to government officials, diplomats and experts with educational or professional purposes — since the program was scaled back in mid-2023. The limitation followed a high-profile incident in which a US Army private, facing disciplinary action, bolted across the demarcation line into North Korea during a civilian tour. The unauthorized crossing prompted the UNC to tighten security and sharply limit access to the JSA, effectively ending public tours that had long symbolized a rare point of openness along the world’s most fortified border.
Adding to the intrigue, diplomatic sources have indicated that Washington is expected to replace acting US Ambassador to South Korea Joseph Yun just days before Trump’s visit. Yun, who has served as acting envoy in Seoul for about nine months, is expected to step down around Sunday, with Kevin Kim, a Korean American deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, likely to succeed him.
Kim previously worked under Stephen Biegun, the State Department’s special representative for North Korea from 2018 to 2020, and was involved in working-level coordination for the historic US-North Korea summits during Trump’s first term.
Because the acting ambassador role does not require Senate confirmation, Kim could assume the post immediately. The timing of this sudden change in top US diplomatic personnel in Seoul — right before Trump’s arrival for a major global summit — is viewed by observers as highly unusual.
The tour suspension and potential replacement of the acting US ambassador to South Korea have fueled speculation that preparations could be underway for a potential Trump-Kim meeting — possibly a reprisal of their dramatic encounter at the same site in June 2019, when Trump became the first sitting US president to step into North Korea.
In June 2019, Trump famously met Kim at Panmunjom, just 32 hours after publicly proposing the meeting on social media while attending the G20 summit in Japan.
CNN reported over the weekend that Trump administration officials have privately discussed the possibility of arranging a meeting between the two leaders during Trump’s trip, though no official contact has yet been made between Washington and Pyongyang.
Still, many observers caution that the suspension may be more about deterrence than diplomacy. Restricting civilian and foreign access to the inter-Korean border during the high-profile APEC summit could reduce the risk of North Korean provocations or security incidents as world leaders gather in South Korea.