North Korea restates list of demands

NORTH KOREA on Saturday reiterated its demands for South Korea to send back 12 North Korean restaurant workers who came to the South in 2016, saying such a move would demonstrate Seoul’s willingness to improve relations.

The statement by North Korea’s Red Cross came a week after Seoul said it would look more closely into the circumstances surrounding the women’s arrival following a media report that suggested some of them might have been brought to the South against their will.

Earlier in the week, North Korea canceled a high-level meeting with the South over U.S.-South Korean military exercises and threatened to call off a planned summit between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and President Trump.

The cancellation cooled what had been an unusual flurry of diplomatic moves from Pyongyang following a provocative year of nuclear and missile tests.

Kim met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in a historic summit on April 27 where they issued a vague vow for the “complete denuclearization” of their peninsula and pledged permanent peace. More substantial discussions over the North’s nuclear weapons are expected between Kim and Trump in a meeting planned for June 12 in Singapore.