North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed "his fixed will" on a possible June 12 summit with U. S. President Donald Trump in a meeting on Saturday with the president of South Korea, North Korea’s state news agency said. During what it called in-depth discussions, Kim
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed “his fixed will” on a possible June 12 summit with U. S. President Donald Trump in a meeting on Saturday with the president of South Korea, North Korea’s state news agency said.
During what it called in-depth discussions, Kim and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in agreed to hold high-level talks between their two nations on June 1, news agency KCNA said.
Kim and Moon held a surprise meeting in an effort to ensure that a high-stakes summit between Kim and U. S. President Donald Trump takes place successfully, South Korean officials said.
The meeting was the latest dramatic turn in a week of diplomatic flip-flops surrounding the prospects for an unprecedented summit between the United States and North Korea, and the strongest sign yet that the two Korean leaders are trying to keep the on-again off-again summit on track.
Their two hours of talks at the Panmunjom border village came a month after they held the first inter-Korean summit in more than a decade at the same venue. At that meeting, they declared they would work toward a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War.
“The two leaders candidly exchanged views about making the North Korea-U. S. summit a successful one and about implementing the Panmunjom Declaration,” South Korea’s presidential spokesman said in a statement. He did not confirm how the meeting was arranged or which side asked for it.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said an advance team of White House and U. S. State Department officials would leave for Singapore on schedule this weekend to prepare for a possible summit there.
