N. Korea general heads to N.Y. for talks on summit
Visit with Pompeo may lead to resetting date for nuke session
TOKYO — A top North Korean official is on his way to United States for talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about a landmark summit between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, as efforts to the make the meeting happen go into overdrive.
Kim Yong Chol, a four-star general who has been at the forefront of North Korea’s diplomatic outreach, landed at Beijing Capital International Airport on Tuesday, according to television footage from the airport.
He was initially booked on an Air China flight to Washington, D.C., but changed to a Wednesday flight bound for New York, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported. That would have him arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after 2 p.m. Wednesday.
In a morning tweet, Trump confirmed that the general was on his way to New York — and a White House aide later said that Pompeo plans to meet him there this week.
“We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea,” the president tweeted Tuesday morning. “Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York.”
Kim Yong Chol is a vice chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the communist organization through which the ruling family controls North Korea, but is not technically the No. 2 behind Kim Jong Un.
He has, however, emerged as one of the leader’s closest aides and has been at all the talks this year that have led to the current rapprochement.
He will be the highest-ranking North Korean to visit the United States since Gen. Jo Myong Rok went to the White House to see President Bill Clinton in 2000 as part of a denuclearization effort that went nowhere.
Although Trump has not officially announced that the summit is back on, his staff is acting as though it is. Trump abruptly canceled the summit Thursday in a letter to Kim Jong Un that cited “the tremendous anger and open hostility” of recent North Korean statements.
That includes a meeting planned at the White House on June 7 between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. That visit is expected to provide a chance for Trump and Abe to coordinate their strategy.
A U.S. team led by Sung Kim, a former American negotiator with North Korea who serves as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, was to continue holding talks on the northern side of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas. Officials began discussing the substance of any summit agreement, focusing on the thorny issue of denuclearization, with a North Korean team led by Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui on Sunday.
Separately, an advance team headed by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin is in Singapore making logistical plans for the summit, should it go ahead.
Kim Yong Chol was directly sanctioned by the Treasury Department for his involvement in North Korea’s nuclear program and illicit activities while he served as director of intelligence, so the U.S. would have had to grant a waiver to allow him to enter the country.