North Korea’s Kim asks Trump for fresh meeting

SEOUL/WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump received a “very warm, very positive” letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un asking for a second meeting and the White House is looking at scheduling one, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday.

The two countries have been discussing North Korea’s nuclear programs since their leaders met in Singapore in June, although that summit’s outcome was criticized for being short on concrete details about how and whether Mr. Kim is willing to give up weapons that threaten the United States.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in is scheduled to have his third summit with Mr. Kim next week in Pyongyang, and his government had pushed for a three-way summit involving Mr. Trump, with the aim of agreeing a joint declaration to end the 195053 Korean War.

The conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the US-led United Nations forces including South Korea technically still at war with North Korea.

While South Korea had hoped an accord formally ending the conflict could have been unveiled on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly later this month, Mr. Moon’s security chief Chung Eui-yong said last week, without elaborating, that the necessary conditions for a three-way meeting were missing.

Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, has also said he did not believe Mr. Kim would attend such a gathering.

Hopes of progress were revived however after Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday that a personal letter from Mr. Kim was on the way.

“It was a very warm, very positive letter,” Ms. Sanders said at Monday’s briefing.

“The primary purpose of the letter was to request and look to schedule another meeting with the president which we are open to and are already in the process of coordinating that.”

Ms. Sanders told reporters the letter exhibited “a continued commitment to focus on denuclearization of the peninsula.”

She said a military parade in Pyongyang on Sunday was “a sign of good faith” because it did not feature any long-range missiles.

In South Korea, officials nurtured hope that next week’s inter-Korean summit could provide renewed momentum to nuclear negotiations, after last month’s setback when Mr. Trump cancelled a visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo due to a lack of progress. —