The pageantry, pomp, and circumstance was a sight to behold as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un strolled south of the Demilitarized Zone, hand-in-hand with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, becoming the first member of the Kim dynasty to step foot on South Korean soil since the 1950-1953 Korean War. The entire ceremony was impeccably choreographed, even down to the food, and meant to showcase to the world that new beginnings of a peaceful regime on the Korean Peninsula were on the horizon. Moon and Kim looked like long-lost brothers, laughing, joking, hugging, and making grand pledges of denuclearization, normal economic relations, and diplomatic normalization. As Kim wrote in the guestbook as he entered the Peace House straddling the border, “New history starts from here. At the start of history, and an era of peace.”

Is this truly the beginning of an historic diplomatic peace between the two Koreas, a permanent calm that has eluded the peninsula for seven decades? The leadership in Pyongyang and Seoul are certainly giving peace a chance; Kim and Moon promised to start a formal process of officially ending the Korean War by signing a peace treaty this year. North Korea’s willingness to allow the phrase “complete denuclearization” in the joint declaration was a significant inclusion, if for no other reason in that it reaffirms the central goal of the upcoming meetings between Kim and President Trump in several weeks’ time.