Kim mentions talks for first time
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has acknowledged the prospect of talks with the US, state media reported on Tuesday, in his first official mention of dialogue with Washington ahead of a planned summit with President Donald Trump.
Trump agreed last month to a landmark summit with the nuclear-armed North but with no specific dates or venue set, there had been questions over Pyongyang’s intention to participate.
On Monday, Kim discussed the “the prospect of the DPRK-US dialogue” with party officials, the state KCNA news agency said, referring to the North by its official acronym. He delivered a report “on the development of the recent situation on the Korean peninsula”, including the separate summit with South Korea to be held later this month, it said.
In a growing rapprochement on the Korean peninsula, Kim is scheduled to meet the South’s president Moon Jae-in for a rare inter-Korean summit on April 27.
Trump has also agreed to meet Kim to discuss denuclearisation as soon as next month. The summit would be the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. But the North remained publicly silent for weeks after its leader’s invitation to talks was first delivered to Trump by South Korean officials.
This fuelled concerns in Washington that Seoul had overstated the North’s willingness to negotiate over its own nuclear arsenal, even as officials scrambled to prepare for the prospective meeting.
Kim’s remarks on Monday break that public silence, although he did not specifically refer to a summit with Trump. They follow reports North Korean officials have told their US counterparts Kim is ready to discuss denuclearisation.
Trump said on Monday he planned to meet Kim in “May or early June”. “I think there will be great respect paid by both parties and hopefully there will be a deal on denuking,” he said. At Pyongyang metro stations , commuters crowded around newspaper stands displaying the pages of the Rodong Sinmun, the official organ of the ruling Workers’ Party, to read the news.