3 US prisoners to return from N Korea

Trump-Kim summit well on track amid flurry of diplomacy

US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo is expected to return from North Korea with three American detainees, as well as details of an upcoming summit between leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, a South Korean official said yesterday.

Pompeo arrived in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, from Japan and headed to its Koryo Hotel for meetings.

US diplomats and officials accompanying him were feted at a lunch by Kim Yongchol, a former spy chief and now the North’s director of the United Front Department, responsible for inter-Korean relations.

Trump earlier broke the news of Pompeo’s second visit to North Korea in less than six weeks and said the two countries had agreed on a date and location for the summit, without providing details.

An official at South Korea’s presidential Blue House said Pompeo was expected to finalise the date and secure the release of the three American detainees.

While Trump said it would be a “great thing” if the American detainees were freed, Pompeo told reporters he had not received such a commitment but hoped North Korea would “do the right thing”.

“We’ll talk about it again today,” he said. “I think it’d be a great gesture if they would choose to do so.”

At lunch yesterday, Pompeo said the US was committed to working with North Korea to achieve peace on the Korean peninsula.

“I have high expectations the United States will play a very big role in establishing peace,” said Kim, the former spy chief.

In response, Pompeo said the group with him was “equally committed to working with you to achieve exactly that”.

“For decades, we have been adversaries. Now we are hopeful that we can work together to resolve this conflict, take away threats to the world and make your country have all the opportunities your people so richly deserve,” Pompeo said.

The expected US-North Korea summit has sparked a flurry of diplomacy, with Japan, South Korea and China holding a high-level meeting in Tokyo yesterday.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said concerned parties should seize the opportunity to promote denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan would normalise ties with North Korea if the nuclear and missile issues, and that of abducted Japanese citizens, were solved.

“We must take the recent momentum towards denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula and towards peace and security in North-east Asia, and, co-operating even further with international society, make sure this is linked to concrete action by North Korea,” Abe told a news conference.

North Korea has admitted to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens decades ago to train spies. Five have returned to Japan.

The three US detainees being held are Korean-American missionary Kim Dongchul, Kim Sang-duk, also known as Tony Kim, who spent a month teaching at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology before he was arrested in 2017, and Kim Hak-song, who also taught at the university.

Until now, the only American released by North Korea during Trump’s presidency has been Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old university student who returned to the US in a coma last summer after 17 months of captivity and died days later. Warmbier’s death escalated US-North Korea tension, already running high at the time over Pyongyang’s stepped-up missile tests.

North Korea reminded the US yesterday there was still tension between them, warning it against “making words and acts that may destroy the hard-won atmosphere of dialogue”, the North’s state media said.

“The US is persistently clinging to the hostile policy toward the DPRK, misleading the public opinion. Such behaviour may result in endangering the security of its own country,” it added, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Pompeo’s visit comes a day after Kim Jong-un made his second trip to China in less than two months, meeting President Xi Jinping and discussing the international talks over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

During the visit, announced only after it was over, Kim told Xi he hoped relevant parties would take “phased” and “synchronised” measures to realise denuclearisation and lasting peace on the peninsula.

Separately, Trump and Xi discussed developments on the Korean peninsula and Kim’s visit to China during a phone call on Tuesday morning, the White House said. – Reuters