North Korea has agreed to meet with South Korea next week to coordinate the logistics and agendas for an inter-Korea summit in April, the South said Saturday.
Each side will send a thee-member team Thursday to the border truce village of Panmunjom.
Ri Son Gwon, chairman of North Korea’s committee for the peaceful reunification of the country, will lead the North’s delegation. His counterpart Cho Myoung-gyon will lead the South’s team.
April summit
The April summit between the two Korean leaders, the South’s Moon Jae-in and the North’s Kim Jong Un, follows the North’s recent participation in the Winter Olympics in the South. The summit also comes ahead of the face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and the North’s Kim that is expected to take place by the end of May to work out a deal to end the North’s nuclear weapons’ deal.
Kim has agreed to discuss ending his country’s threatening nuclear arms program which, in the past year, has accelerated efforts to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could target the U.S. mainland, and to hold off on further provocative weapons testing while talks are underway.
President Trump’s decision to agree to denuclearization talks by the end of May caught allies and adversaries by surprise. The Trump administration, however, has said that its hard-line “maximum pressure” campaign would remain in place until a deal is reached. Under Trump, the U.S. has led international efforts to impose increasing economic sanctions on the North and has stressed that military action is also a viable option to end the growing nuclear threat. | voanews
