Wanderlust

Tag: Kim Jong Un

  • Donald Trump to meet South Korean president amid uncertainty over Kim Jong-un summit

    President Trump will host South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House next week for a meeting expected to center on clarifying expectations for an upcoming summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong

    President Trump will host South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House next week for a meeting expected to center on clarifying and aligning the expectations that Washington and Seoul have for Mr. Trump’s upcoming summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

    The Moon visit Tuesday comes amid uncertainty over the planned June 12 summit after North Korea threatened this week to pull out amid anger over National Security Advisor John R. Bolton’s claims that Washington seeks a quick, verifiable, “Libya model” denuclearization from Pyongyang.

    President Trump walked back Mr. Bolton’s assertions Thursday, telling reporters “the Libyan model isn’t a model that we have at all when we’re thinking of North Korea,” and stressing that if Mr. Kim is serious about abandoning his nuclear program, Washington will provide the North Korean leader’s regime with “protections.”

    While those comments hang in the backdrop, national security sources say the White House is scrambling behind-the-scenes to nail down exactly what its expectations are for the highly-anticipated summit with Mr. Kim in Singapore.

    That’s where President Moon comes in, says Hak-Soon Paik, the head North Korea analyst at the Sejong Institute, a top South Korean think tank.

    Mr. Paik, who’s in Washington ahead of Mr. Moon’s visit to the White House, says it “comes at an opportune moment” for both South Korea and the U.S.

    “On the U.S. side, the administration has a chance to hear directly from the South Korean president what his views toward what Mr. Trump’s expectations should be for the upcoming summit with Kim,” Mr. Paik told The Washington Times on Friday.

    “For the South Korean side,” he said, “this is a moment to advise Mr. Trump directly on Seoul’s view of what would or would not amount to a successful [summit].”

    The Moon visit comes roughly a month after Mr. Trump held a similar meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to soak in his perspective on how a one-on-one with Mr. Kim should play out.

    A top aid to Mr. Abe said at the time that the Japanese premier told Mr. Trump to demand Mr. Kim meet a hard deadline of 2020 to permanently surrender his nuclear programs and that no sanctions relief for Pyongyang should be granted until the deadline is met.

    Katsuyuki Kawai, the special adviser for foreign affairs to Mr. Abe from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said Mr. Abe also pressed Mr. Trump to realize “America is in a stronger position than Chairman Kim” and that North Korean denuclearization has to occur before Mr. Trump faces a potentially difficult re-election campaign in just two years.

    Sources close to Mr. Moon have told The Times the South Korean president is likely to offer similar advice next week, with particular emphasis on the timeline the administration should demand for denuclearization.

    One source said Mr. Moon will attempt to make the case that at least a year, if not considerably longer, will be needed in order for any kind of successful, verifiable denuclearization to occur.

  • Kim Jong-un, Moon Jae-in meeting failure could scuttle Trump summit

    The prospect for a historic summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un is rising, but it won’t happen if things don’t go smoothly Friday when the North Korean leader first meets with South Korean

    SEOUL — The prospect for a historic summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un is rising, but it won’t happen if things don’t go smoothly Friday when the North Korean leader first meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in for their own high-stakes one-on-one meeting.

    North Korea says it is ready to halt testing of its nuclear weapons programs indefinitely, but Mr. Moon is still under immense pressure to get Mr. Kim to publicly declare that he is willing to discuss total abandonment and dismantling of the weapons he already has. Washington has drawn the red line for serious talks toward sanctions relief to proceed.

    South Korean officials said Mr. Kim signaled such willingness to them during a private meeting last month, but the North Korean leader hasn’t said anything in public.

    “So President Moon knows that if he cannot get some kind of denuclearization statement from Kim on April 27, people will consider the summit a failure,” said Joonhyung Kim, a regional geopolitics researcher at South Korea’s Handong University who is part of a circle of analysts advising the Moon administration.

    “We need to hear it from Kim Jong-un’s mouth,” Mr. Kim told The Washington Times.

    The likelihood of a Trump-Kim summit even without a clear denuclearization statement from Mr. Kim seemed to get a boost with the revelation last week that CIA Director Mike Pompeo held a secret meeting with the North Korean leader in Pyongyang early this month.

    But concern over the issue has persisted amid Pyongyang’s claim that it is willing to scrap a major nuclear test site and indefinitely halt nuclear and missile tests because it is confident it has achieved its goal of developing a nuclear arsenal that can ward off attacks and ensure the survival of the regime.

    Denuclearization is just one of the major issues looming over the Moon-Kim summit Friday in the village of Panmunjom, along the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone that has divided the Korean Peninsula since the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 hostilities.

    Another major question centers on the extent to which Mr. Moon makes promises to the North that diverge from views of hard-liners in the Trump administration. Such promises could relate to Pyongyang’s desired retention of intercontinental ballistic missiles or the speed at which the Kim regime can expect relief from crippling international sanctions.

    Mr. Moon, who has long advocated a policy of outreach to Pyongyang, may simply seek to keep talks alive with the North, regardless of pressure from Washington.

    Where the Trump administration is seen to desire an “all-or-nothing deal” that can be reached quickly, many here say Mr. Moon is committed to a slower approach — one that has denuclearization as a goal to be achieved over a significant time frame.

    One senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Moon’s advisers are confident that they have persuaded the Trump administration to go along with this “very gradual approach that will eventually lead to reaching our collective goal of denuclearization.”

    The official said the “situation is complex,” with Mr. Moon playing the delicate role of “mediator between Trump and Kim.”

    Mr. Moon’s conservative critics here fear that the South Korean president may be overconfident and risk losing Washington’s trust by yielding too eagerly to Pyongyang. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these [expletives] in the Moon administration are talking more to the North Koreans than they are to the Americans at this point,” one former high-level official told The Times.

    But most South Korean analysts say Mr. Moon knows what’s at stake.

    “President Moon is going to be trying with maximum effort to persuade Kim Jong-un to keep his commitment to denuclearize and to not step back from the commitment he already made in private to a special delegation that went to Pyongyang,” said Paik Hak-soon, a top North Korea specialist with the Sejong Institute think tank outside Seoul.

    But Mr. Paik said a range of other issues will likely be discussed Friday, including a push to set clear guidelines for regular high-level military-to-military communications between North and South, with the goal of avoiding a clash should the diplomatic push melt down.

    ‘Anything is possible’

    Mr. Paik said he is confident that the Moon-Kim summit could set the stage for a major and swift breakthrough in the subsequent Trump-Kim summit, especially because it won’t be mired by the presence of other regional powers.

    The last major attempt at diplomacy with North Korea — the yearslong “six-party talks” that melted down in 2009 — involved high-level representatives from China, Russia, the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

    “This bilateral format this time around, coupled with the timing of this U.S.-North Korea summit taking place at a quite early stage of the Trump administration’s tenure, and also the Trump administration’s special leadership style, could give both sides a lot of confidence in making a deal,” said Mr. Paik. “Anything is possible in this format if the personal chemistry is there.

    “Getting Trump and Kim alone together gives an incentive to both sides,” he said. “Donald Trump thinks that in a bilateral format he can exercise whatever power he has to induce Kim Jong-un to make concessions, and Kim Jong-un might be in the same position, thinking he can talk to American leadership directly and put all the key issues on the table and do a comprehensive package deal.”

    The bilateral approach also leaves China and Japan on the outside looking in, which some here argue has been Mr. Moon’s strategy all along. “I was advising Moon on foreign policy in last year’s election,” said Mr. Kim, the geopolitics researcher at Handong University. “The idea is that the smaller the number of players the better.”

    Jun Bong-geun, who oversees security and unification studies at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul, suggested that even if North Korea is only posturing in the talks, Mr. Kim will have to commit quickly to something in a one-on-one setting with Mr. Trump.

    “If the North Koreans want to truly buy time, they’re going to have to come up with some kind of denuclearization measures,” said Mr. Jun, although he added that he won’t be surprised if Pyongyang first makes an offer to get rid of its ballistic missiles as a way to delay a serious confrontation on the nuclear issue.

    Others warn against believing in anything that the North Koreans bring to the table.

    “I have experience dealing with them, and I know they are not simply going to get rid of their nuclear weapons,” said Kim Hee-sang of the Korea Institute for National Security Affairs think tank in Seoul.

    ‘Missed chance’

    A former longtime adviser to the South Korean government, Mr. Kim told The Times that “the simple reality is that the North Koreans will be disingenuous throughout these upcoming summits.”

    He added that North Korea’s leader may offer to break up his nuclear program but said the offer will be superficial and that Pyongyang will make it known that pieces of the program can be hidden and restarted in the future.

    On a separate front, Mr. Kim expressed concern that Mr. Moon may be planning to offer the North Korean leader something well beyond the American comfort level regarding the size or positioning of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea.

    Pyongyang has long asserted that it would consider denuclearization only in conjunction with the departure of the 30,000 U.S. forces deployed to the South since the Korean War ended in a stalemate.

    Although the Moon administration claimed to have received back-channel assurances that Pyongyang is willing to drop the demand for troop withdrawal, Mr. Kim said there is reason for concern.

    “I don’t think Moon will make promises that cannot be kept, but I am concerned because everyone knows that when it comes to serious peace negotiations on the Korean Peninsula, the [troops] issue always arises,” he said. “There should never be a case where the U.S. military leaves South Korea.”

    Mr. Kim added flatly that whatever happens with the upcoming talks, the long-term policy toward North Korea should be some form of regime change.

    Mr. Kim lamented that the downside of the push for peaceful negotiations is that it has given a hue of legitimacy to the regime in Pyongyang and, as a result, pushed the “regime change issue off the table.”

    “The Trump administration has made an effective outcome here so far by making North Korea think they are in a very severe and desperate situation and that they have no choice but to try talking,” he said. “But when Trump brought about the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign of the past year, there was a chance to bring about regime change in Pyongyang.

    “Right now,” he said, “we’ve missed that chance.”

  • US won’t ease sanctions without action by NKorea on nukes

    The White House said Monday North Korea won’t get sanctions relief until it takes “concrete action” toward denuclearization, the goal of President Donald Trump’s planned summit with Kim Jong Un.

    WASHINGTON (AP) – The White House said Monday North Korea won’t get sanctions relief until it takes “concrete action” toward denuclearization, the goal of President Donald Trump’s planned summit with Kim Jong Un.

    Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ comments appeared to leave open the possibility of easing the U.S.-led “maximum pressure” campaign before North Korea had completely given up its nuclear weapons.

    But Sanders said the U.S. wouldn’t make the mistake of past administrations in taking the North Koreans “simply at their word.” She said, “We’ve seen some steps in the right direction but we have a long way to go.”

    On Saturday, North Korea announced it will close its nuclear testing facility and suspend nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests – a move welcomed by Trump as “big progress.” The North stopped short of suggesting it will give up its nuclear weapons or scale back its production of missiles and their related components.

    Asked if the suspension of tests was a positive sign, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Monday, “Right now, I think there (are) a lot of reasons for optimism that the negotiations will be fruitful and we’ll see.”

    This Friday, U.S.-allied South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim will hold a summit in the demilitarized zone between the Koreas that could lay the ground for Trump’s planned meeting with the North Korean dictator in May or early June. The leaders of the U.S. and North Korea have never met during six decades of hostility since the Korean War.

    Sanders said the U.S. goal was the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. When asked if the president was willing to accept anything short of that goal before lifting sanctions or was willing to go incrementally, she told reporters: “Certainly no sanctions lifted until we see concrete actions taken by North Korea to denuclearize.”

    Last year, the U.S. spearheaded through the U.N. Security Council the toughest international sanctions yet against North Korea in response to three long-range missile launches and its most powerful nuclear test explosion yet. The Trump administration supplemented those restrictions with unilateral U.S. sanctions against firms that had conducted illicit trade with the North.

    This year, Kim has pivoted from confrontation to diplomacy and, according to South Korea and China, has expressed a commitment to denuclearization. There is still uncertainty about what he seeks in return.

    Three weeks ago, Trump’s pick to be the next secretary of state, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, became the most senior U.S. official to travel to North Korea in nearly two decades, but the content of his discussions with Kim has not been made public.

    The last nuclear talks between the U.S. and North Korea collapsed in 2012. The two nations also remain in a technical state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice not a peace treaty.

  • Kim Jong-un summit threatened by Trump’s bid to end Iran nuclear deal

    President Trump’s determination to undermine the Iran nuclear deal could undercut his hopes for quick success in the upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, many in South Korea fear.

    SEOUL — President Trump’s determination to undermine the Iran nuclear deal could undercut his hopes for quick success in the upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, many in South Korea fear.

    Former high-level South Korean officials and analysts say Mr. Kim will be far less likely to abandon his nuclear and missile programs if the U.S. pulls out of the 2015 multilateral agreement meant to curb Tehran’s nuclear programs in exchange for relief from international economic sanctions.

    Mr. Kim plans a one-on-one summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on April 27 and is set to meet Mr. Trump next month or in early June at a still-to-be-determined location. The Trump administration has said the goal of the high-risk meeting will be to get the North to agree to eventually give up its nuclear programs.

    But the prospect of a U.S. pullout from the Iran deal casts a shadow over the talks.

    “It will have a very negative influence on North Korea’s decision of whether or not to come out with a strong denuclearization statement or to make any serious concessions during a summit with President Trump,” said Paik Hak-soon, a top North Korea analyst with the Sejong Institute think tank in the South.

    The Iran agreement and the Korean Peninsula talks “are quite closely connected in the perception of the North Korean leadership,” Mr. Paik said in an interview. “Trashing the Iran deal will have a very souring effect.”

    Many here see Mr. Trump’s appointment of John R. Bolton as his national security adviser, a sharp critic of the Obama administration’s Iran deal and a past proponent of regime change in Iran, as an indication that Washington is bent on pulling fully out of the accord.

    Under the Iran deal’s terms, U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France gave billions of dollars in sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for sharp curbs and intrusive inspections of Tehran’s nuclear programs.

    Other signatories to the deal say they want to preserve it, but Iranian officials have said they will not be bound by the nuclear restrictions if the U.S. says it no longer is part of the agreement.

    Mr. Trump decertified the Iran deal as in the U.S. national interest in October — a mainly rhetorical step that sets the stage for a full withdrawal. Critics of the agreement say Iran has violated the letter and the spirit of the deal by testing a string of long-range ballistic missiles and continuing to threaten Israel and U.S. Sunni Arab allies in the region through a network of proxy forces such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

    The president has issued an ultimatum to Britain, France and Germany. If they don’t join Washington in fixing “terrible flaws” in the deal, Mr. Trump said, he will move to unilaterally reimpose U.S. sanctions on Iran by May 12, the next deadline for him to renew sanctions relief that Washington has been giving Iran for the past three years. There has been little indication of progress on a revised deal with exactly a month to go.

    State Department Policy Planning Director Brian Hook told reporters last month that the goal is to get the Europeans to agree to collective new sanctions against Iran if it tests long-range missiles or evades inspections of its remaining nuclear facilities.

    Echoes across Asia

    But the Iran debate is having clear echoes on the other side of Asia as Mr. Trump pursues his “deal on the de-nuking of North Korea.”

    “I see a very close correlation with the Iran agreement, and I am concerned that if the agreement is not [upheld], it will have an impact on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula,” said retired South Korean Army Lt. Gen. Chun In-bum, an analyst on the North Korean threat.

    “It’s going to make the negotiations between the United States and North Korea more difficult,” said Jun Bong-geun, the head of security and unification studies at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul. “North Korea may want more assurances from Washington, and they may want to hide more.

    “It might send a message that if changing administrations can change a deal, what does that mean for [Pyongyang]? It will probably make it harder for the North Koreans to trust a deal with the U.S.,” Gen. Chun said in an interview.

    The Moon government has remained mum on the Iran issue, but one former official told The Times that there “definitely is concern” inside the administration.

    Given the skepticism Mr. Trump and his advisers have about Iran’s compliance, the bar may be even higher for Mr. Kim. U.S. security officials say North Korea has routinely violated international accords meant to stop it from obtaining nuclear weapons and the missiles to hit the U.S. and its East Asian allies.

    The Trump administration has indicated that denuclearization — not just a declaration by Pyongyang but verifiable abandonment of the nuclear program — is a precondition for negotiations toward lifting sanctions on North Korea.

    Uncertainty looms, however, over the administration’s game plan for the Trump-Kim summit.

    Just days after he was appointed as national security adviser last month, Mr. Bolton told Radio Free Asia that the administration should follow the “Libyan Model” with North Korea. The George W. Bush administration struck a relatively quick deal in December 2003 with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to give up his nuclear materials in exchange for sanctions relief and the promise of normalized relations with the West.

    But South Korean sources say the mention of Libya likely angered Pyongyang, which has long pointed to Gadhafi’s death at the hands of U.S.-backed rebels during the 2011 Arab Spring as an example of why a smaller state should never surrender its nuclear arsenal.

    “We all know the Gadhafi case is something the North Koreans point to repeatedly to demonstrate that their behavior will not be decided by anybody, let alone by the United States, the way Gadhafi’s was,” said Mr. Paik. “And I think you can compare the collapse of the Iran deal, if America pulls out of it, to the Gadhafi case.”

    If Mr. Trump keeps the U.S. in the Iran deal, however, “the North Koreans could more comfortably come to the table with the United States.”

    “Bolton clearly has a very narrow view of the Libya case,” said the former official, who spoke on background with The Times, arguing that the U.S.-Libya detente in 2006 depended heavily on the involvement of Britain as an intermediary and that no such intermediary exists vis-a-vis the potential U.S.-North Korean negotiations.

    The uncertainty, many here say, means that the fate of any Trump-Kim summit will depend heavily on what comes from a summit between Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon.

    Mr. Paik believes one of Mr. Moon’s goals may be to get such a statement from Mr. Kim on denuclearization. At a minimum, he said, Mr. Moon is “trying to persuade Kim Jong-un with maximum effort to keep his commitment to denuclearize when he comes to the U.S.-North Korea summit talks.”

  • Donald Trump says he’s looking forward to North Korea meeting

    President Trump said Wednesday that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un will do the right thing for his country and that China is helping with the denuclearization process.

    President Trump said Wednesday that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un will do the right thing for his country and that China is helping with the denuclearization process.

    “For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility. Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!” Mr. Trumptweeted.

    He also said that Chinese President Xi Jinping said his meeting with the North Korean leader went well, and that a meeting with the U.S. was discussed. A diplomatic train arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, but it was unclear if Mr. Kim was on board. The Chinese later confirmed Mr. Kim’s presence, marking his first foreign visit since taking over in 2011.

    SEE ALSO: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un makes first visit to China, Beijing confirms

    “Received message last night from XI JINPING of China that his meeting with KIM JONG UN went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me. In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!” he added.

    For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility. Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

    Received message last night from XI JINPING of China that his meeting with KIM JONG UN went very well and that KIM looks forward to his meeting with me. In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

  • South Korea meeting thrusts North’s Kim into the limelight

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un grins, just on the verge of a belly laugh, as he grasps the hand of a visiting South Korean official. He sits at a wide conference table and beams as the envoys look on

    SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un grins, just on the verge of a belly laugh, as he grasps the hand of a visiting South Korean official. He sits at a wide conference table and beams as the envoys look on deferentially. He smiles broadly again at dinner, his wife at his side, the South Koreans seeming to hang on his every word.

    Kim is used to being the center of gravity in a country that his family has ruled with unquestioned power since 1948, but the chance to play the senior statesman on the Korean Peninsula with a roomful of visiting South Koreans has afforded the autocratic leader a whole new raft of propaganda and political opportunities.

    Photos released by North Korean state media Tuesday showing Kim meeting with the envoys are all the more remarkable coming just months after a barrage of North Korean weapons tests and threats against Seoul and Washington had many fearing war.

    It wasn’t immediately clear how the images were reported in the North, but they spread rapidly across the southern part of the peninsula a day after Pyongyang said Kim had an “openhearted talk” in Pyongyang with 10 envoys for South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Kim reportedly expressed his desire to “write a new history of national reunification” during a dinner that Seoul said lasted about four hours.

    The meeting Monday marked the first time South Korean officials have met with the young North Korean leader in person since he took power after his dictator father’s death in late 2011. It’s the latest sign that the Koreas are trying to mend ties after one of the tensest years in a region that seems to be permanently on edge.

    Given the robust history of bloodshed, threats and animosity on the Korean Peninsula, there is considerable skepticism over whether the Koreas’ apparent warming relations will lead to lasting peace. North Korea, some believe, is trying to use improved ties with the South to weaken U.S.-led international sanctions and pressure, and to provide domestic propaganda fodder for Kim.

    But each new development also raises the possibility that the rivals can use the momentum from the good feelings created during North Korea’s participation in the South’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last month to ease a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and restart talks between Pyongyang and Washington.

    The role of a confident leader welcoming visiting, and lower-ranking, officials from the rival South is one Kim clearly relishes. Smiling for cameras, he posed with the South Koreans and presided over what was described by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency as a “co-patriotic and sincere atmosphere.”

    Many in Seoul and Washington will want to know if, the rhetoric and smiling images notwithstanding, there’s any possibility Kim will negotiate over the North’s breakneck pursuit of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can viably target the U.S. mainland.

    The North has repeatedly and bluntly declared it will not give up its nuclear bombs. It also hates the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that were postponed because of the Olympics but will likely happen later this spring. And achieving its nuclear aims rests on the North resuming tests of missiles and bombs that set the region on edge.

    But there was nothing about the Koreas’ very real differences in the North Korean report. Kim was said to have offered his views on “activating the versatile dialogue, contact, cooperation and exchange” between the countries

    He was also said to have given “important instruction to the relevant field to rapidly take practical steps for” a summit with South Korean President Moon, which the North proposed last month.

    Moon, a liberal who is keen to engage the North, likely wants to visit Pyongyang. But he must first broker better ties between North Korea and Washington, Seoul’s top ally and its military protector.

    In the meantime, Moon sent his national security director, Chung Eui-yong, to head the 10-member South Korean delegation that was sent to Pyongyang. Chung’s trip is the first known high-level visit by South Korean officials to the North in about a decade.

    The South Korean delegates have another meeting with North Korean officials on Tuesday before returning home, but it’s unclear if Kim will be there.

    Kim was said to have expressed at the dinner his “firm will to vigorously advance the north-south relations and write a new history of national reunification by the concerted efforts of our nation to be proud of in the world.”

    There is speculation that better inter-Korean ties could pave the way for Washington and Pyongyang to talk about the North’s nuclear weapons. The United States, however, has made clear that it doesn’t want empty talks and that all options, including military measures, are on the table.

    Previous warming ties between the Koreas have come to nothing amid North Korea’s repeated weapons tests and the North’s claims that the annual U.S.-South Korean war games are a rehearsal for an invasion.

    Before leaving for Pyongyang, Chung said he would relay Moon’s hopes for North Korean nuclear disarmament and a permanent peace on the peninsula.

    Chung’s delegation includes intelligence chief Suh Hoon and Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung. The South Korean presidential Blue House said the high-profile delegation is meant to reciprocate the Olympic trip by Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, who became the first member of the North’s ruling family to come to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

    Kim Yo Jong, who also attended Monday’s dinner, and other senior North Korean officials met with Moon during the Olympics, conveyed Kim Jong Un’s invitation to visit Pyongyang and expressed their willingness to hold talks with the United States.

    After the Pyongyang trip, Chung’s delegation is scheduled to fly to the United States to brief officials about the outcome of the talks with North Korean officials.

    President Donald Trump has said talks with North Korea will happen only “under the right conditions.”

    If Moon accepts Kim’s invitation to visit Pyongyang, it would be the third inter-Korean summit talks. The past two summits, one in 2000 and the other in 2007, were held between Kim’s late father, Kim Jong Il, and two liberal South Korean presidents. They resulted in a series of cooperative projects between the Koreas that were scuttled during subsequent conservative administrations in the South.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.