SUNDAY TIMES WEB DESK: The announcement came amid a diplomatic flurry in Washington surrounding the visit of Kim Yong Chol, a hardline former spy chief, and marked a sign of movement in a denuclearization effort that has stalled since a landmark meeting between Trump and the North Korean leader in Singapore on June 12.
“President Donald J Trump met with Kim Yong Chol for an hour and a half to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of February,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. She said a location would be announced later.
The summit was announced even though there has been no indication of any narrowing of differences over US demands that North Korea abandon a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States and Pyongyang’s demands for a lifting of punishing sanctions.
Sanders said that Trump’s talks with the North Korean envoy were productive but added that the United States “is going to continue to keep pressure and sanctions on North Korea.”
South Korea’s presidential office said it expected the upcoming summit to be a “turning point to lay the firm foundation for lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.”
South Korea will work with the United States and other countries to “achieve concrete and practical results toward complete denuclearization and a lasting peace regime through the North Korea-US summit…,” presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said in a statement on Saturday.
South Korea will also expand inter-Korean dialogue to help a successful meeting between Trump and Kim, he added.
The first summit produced a vague commitment by Kim Jong Un to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but he has yet to take what Washington sees as concrete steps in that direction.
Nevertheless, both he and Trump had expressed an interest in arranging a second meeting, something some US-based analysts see as premature.
Critics of US efforts say the first summit only boosted Kim’s international stature without much to show for it, and some believe Trump may see a second meeting as a way of distracting from his domestic troubles.
Trump declared just after the Singapore meeting that the nuclear threat posed by North Korea was over. But hours before Kim Yong Chol’s arrival on Thursday, the US president unveiled a revamped US missile defense strategy that singled out the country as an ongoing and “extraordinary threat.”