The meeting on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom — only the third of its kind since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War — is intended to pave the way for a much-anticipated encounter between the North’s leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.

In the most detailed direct reference to the process by the North so far, the official KCNA news agency said Kim will “open-heartedly discuss… all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations and achieving peace, prosperity and reunification of the Korean peninsula”.

With helicopters buzzing overhead, South Korean President Moon Jae-in left his Blue House office in a convoy of more than a dozen vehicles along a road lined with wellwishers waving Korean flags.

Before his departure, a smiling Moon stopped to greet supporters and thank police officers.

Moon will greet Kim at the concrete blocks that mark the border between the two Koreas in the Demilitarized Zone to begin the rare occasion laden with symbolism.

And when Kim steps over the line he will become the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the Korean War ended 65 years ago.

The North’s nuclear arsenal will be high on the agenda at the talks.

Last year Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear blast, by far its most powerful to date, and launched missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.

Its actions sent tensions soaring as Kim and Trump traded personal insults and threats of war.

Moon seized on the South’s Winter Olympics as an opportunity to broker dialogue between them, and has said his meeting with Kim will serve to set up the summit between Pyongyang and Washington.

Trump has demanded the North give up its weapons, and Washington is pressing for it to do so in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way.

But Seoul played down expectations Thursday, saying the North’s technological advances with its nuclear and missile programmes meant any deal would be “fundamentally different in nature from denuclearisation agreements in 1990s and early 2000s”.

“That’s what makes this summit all the more difficult,” the chief of the South’s presidential secretariat Im Jong-seok told reporters.

Peace and denuclearisation

Pyongyang is demanding as yet unspecified security guarantees to discuss its arsenal.

When Kim visited the North’s key backer Beijing last month in only his first foreign trip as leader, China’s official Xinhua news agency cited him saying that the issue could be resolved, as long as Seoul and Washington take “progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace”.

In the past, North Korean support for denuclearisation of the “Korean peninsula” has been code for the removal of US troops from the South and the end of its nuclear umbrella over its security ally — prospects unthinkable in Washington.

“The big issues we know are peace and denuclearisation,” Yonsei University professor John Delury told AFP.

The two Koreas “can do a lot more on peace than on denuclearisation”, he said, but the post-summit statement will give “a lot of chance to analyse every word, reading between the lines, look for things that are there and not there”.

Pyongyang announced last week a moratorium on nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missiles, adding it would dismantle its Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

But it also said it had completed the development of its weapons and had no need for further tests.

Seoul has also promoted the idea of opening talks towards a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, when hostilities stopped with a ceasefire, leaving the neighbours technically in a state of conflict.

Reunions of families left divided by the war could also be discussed at the summit, and Moon has told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he will raise the emotive subject of Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North.

Assault-rifle wielding police were posted at entry points to the once-pristine island that has become tainted by heavy commercialisation and overdevelopment.

Regional police head Cesar Binag told AFP the shutdown began past midnight, with tourists barred from boarding the ferry that is the main way onto the island.

“Boracay is officially closed to tourists. We are not closing establishments but tourists cannot enter. We are implementing the instruction of the president,” Binag said.

About 600 policemen were deployed, with some performing life-like drills including riot officers battling bottle-hurling protesters and mock hostage taking of sunbathers — all before startled locals.

“It looks like we are at war,” Jessica Gabay, a grocery seller, told AFP late Wednesday.”Maybe the authorities are doing this to instil fear so people will follow the rules.”

President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the shutdown this month after calling the resort a “cesspool”, dirtied by tourism-related businesses dumping raw sewage directly into the ocean.

During the closure only residents with ID cards are allowed to board ferries to the tiny island that is home to around 40,000 people.

On Thursday morning, police began patrolling the beach to enforce a rule prohibiting swimming except in one designated area marked by buoys.

Boats are barred from sailing within three kilometres (1.9 miles) of the shoreline and only Boracay residents are allowed to fish in its waters.

The government said the heavy security presence was intended to squelch any unrest from those unhappy with the shutdown, including some of the roughly 30,000 people employed in the island’s bustling tourist trade.

But resistance was light in the run-up to the closure, with no violent protests and most of the criticism focusing on the plight of laid-off staff.

The workers have been drawn by the relatively good wages on the island that has seen the number of visitors roughly quadruple to two million since 2006.

Years of unchecked growth 

Those tourists, a growing number of whom are Chinese and Korean, pumped roughly $1 billion in revenue into the Philippine economy last year.

But its growth from a sleepy backpacker hideaway into a mass-tourism hub with fast food outlets on the beach has taken a toll.

Unchecked construction has eaten away at the island’s natural beauty, while slimy algae-filled waves in some areas and mountains of discarded drink bottles are problems acknowledged even by critics of the shutdown.

“I’m all for rehabilitation and preserving it but clearly this is not the way to do it,” Philippine politics expert Ashley Acedillo told AFP.

He called the closure an “ill-thought through, unplanned and knee-jerk action” that did not take into account the economic impact on the island’s workers and business community.

The Philippines has pledged to use the closure to shore up the island’s infrastructure, bulldoze illegal structures and clean up the mess left by years of unchecked growth.

For its part, the government has billed it as a long-overdue response to a problem that is not without precedent.

Other Southeast Asian tourism destinations have also cracked down on uncontrolled tourism welcomed by locals needing income and authorities eager for development.

Thailand’s Maya Bay, made famous by the 2000 movie “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, will be off limits for four months from June to September, officials announced last month, in a bid to save its ravaged coral reefs.

The three were identified as Liao Guan Yu, Chen Wei Cyuan and Hsu Yung Li. “The defendants have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” presiding judge Efendi Mukhtar read out the verdict.

While there was no mitigating factor to hand down a lighter sentence, the judge said the crime had contravened government efforts to fight illegal drugs and could harm the country’s future generations.

According to a statement in the previous hearing, the three men were waiting in Anyer Beach in the province of Banten for the five other suspects to offload the amphetamines from a Taiwanese yacht. The police said the drugs weighed 1 metric ton and were worth Rp 2 trillion (US$143.9 million).

The three remained silent when a translator delivered the judge’s verdict. The court will issue another verdict to the other five in a separate hearing on Thursday.

Khmer National Liberation Front founder Sam Serey, wanted by the Cambodian government for an alleged Khmer New Year terrorism threat, has been arrested in Thailand on immigration violations, Cambodian officials said Thursday.

Serey, who has frequently been accused of violent plots by the government, was detained on Wednesday for overstaying his visa, said Khieu Sopheak, spokesman at the Ministry of Interior.

“We are considering a request for his extradition,” Sopheak said.

While more than 20 of his followers have been arrested over the years, none have ever been found armed. Serey, who received political asylum in Denmark, was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison in 2016 for “plotting” an attack.

On April 10, Prime Minister Hun Sen claimed he had foiled yet another plan by Serey to bomb Wat Phnom and Siem Reap during Khmer New Year, although he offered little concrete evidence.

Serey, who vehemently denied the accusations, claimed at the time he had illegally crossed into Cambodia, but confirmed to The Post on Tuesday that he was in Thailand

In February, political refugee Sam Sokha – who was wanted for throwing a sandal at a billboard of Hun Sen – was deported from Thailand. The two governments recently agreed to cooperate more fully on political fugitives, raising fears for the safety of numerous opposition and civil society figures currently seeking refuge in Thailand.

Moon will greet his visitor at the concrete blocks that mark the border between the two Koreas in the Demilitarized Zone, the chief of the South’s presidential secretariat Im Jong-seok said.

When Kim steps over the line he will become the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the Korean War ended 65 years ago.

He will be given a military honour guard and the two leaders will walk to the Peace House, a glass and concrete building on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom where the summit will be held.

Kim will sign the guest book before the morning session starts, calling the occasion a “summit for peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula”.

The delegations will have separate lunches, Im told a briefing, with the North’s group crossing back to their side of the border to eat.

Moon and Kim will plant a tree together on the demarcation line before the afternoon session in the Peace House, Im said.

After they sign an agreement a joint statement will be issued.

A banquet and farewell ceremony will follow in the evening before Kim returns to the North.

Pyongyang’s delegation will include Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong, one of his closest advisers, who attended the Winter Olympics in the South in February as his envoy, Im said.

The North’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam, who accompanied Yo Jong to the Games, will also be part of the group.

The Art Nouveau building, completed in 1898, is undergoing restoration and the culprits made use of the scaffolding to clamber up and prise off six to eight of the leaves, police spokeswoman Irina Steirer said.

The theft from the roof, visible from afar and a well-known landmark in the Austrian capital, took place on Monday night, Steirer said.

The building by architect Joseph Maria Olbrich was constructed to house works by Gustav Klimt and other artists after they quit the stuffy Kuenstlerhaus to found a new art association called the Secession.

Not everyone in Vienna, a vibrant hub of art, science and philosophy at the time, was impressed however, and the original site on the famous Ringstrasse boulevard was abandoned after a public furore.

For the renovation work, due to be completed at the end of May, around 2,500 leaves and 311 “berries” were restored and repaired over recent months and were in the process of being put back.

The leaves, around 60 centimetres (nearly two feet) long made of steel and coated with gold leaf, are worth less than 1,000 euros ($1,200) each, Secession spokeswoman Karin Jaschke told AFP.

“Security measures are being increased,” Jaschke said.//AFP