Global Geopolitical Series: Latest updates on Inter-Korean peace progress

Inter-Korean peace progress continues which began earlier this year with North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics in the South and further intensified through meetings between North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae in and U.S. President Donald Trump at separate events. Here are the latest updates,

• Mark Lambert, the State Department's Korea desk director, as well as acting deputy assistant secretary, had a round-table meeting with about a dozen South Koreans who used to do businesses in North Korea, either at the joint industrial complex in Kaesong or at Mount Kumgang for a cross-border tourist program. The meeting took place at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul for about an hour, where Lambert was quoted as saying that the U.S. is ready to support cross-border exchanges in case Pyongyang demonstrates its will for denuclearization.
   
• North Korea is pressing the South to formally end the inter-Korean war that took place back in the 1950s. Though a truce was agreed, no formal peace agreement was signed.
   
• Earlier this week, as promised, North Korea returned the remains of U.S. soldiers, who died during the Korean war but whose bodies were never returned home.