U.S. envoy talks with N. Koreans

SEOUL, South Korea — Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, held talks with North Korean officials in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas over the weekend, according to a State Department statement on Monday.

The meeting appears to be the first face-to-face contact between U.S. officials and their North Korean counterparts since President Donald Trump met with leader Kim Jong Un on June 12 in Singapore. In a declaration at the summit, the North committed “to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The short joint statement did not define how that would be achieved or say when the process would begin or how long it might take.

The State Department announced later Monday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will again visit Pyongyang beginning Thursday “to continue consultations” with North Korean officials. Pompeo will also travel to Tokyo, Hanoi, Abu Dhabi and Brussels for the NATO summit next week.

Pompeo, who has taken a leading role in negotiations with North Korea, has said it may take years to implement an agreement that would eliminate the nation’s nuclear stockpile. He has already visited Pyongyang twice since April to meet with Kim — the first time when he was still director of the CIA.

Sung Kim, an ambassador to South Korea between 2011 and 2014 and a nuclear negotiator with the North during previous talks, has taken on a key role in dialogue with Pyongyang in recent months. In late May, the envoy led a meeting between U.S. officials and North Korean officials, also in the Demilitarized Zone, ahead of the Singapore summit.

The U.S. statement said that Sung Kim had led a delegation that met with North Korean counterparts in the village of Panmunjom on Sunday, where they discussed the next steps toward implementing the joint declaration signed by Trump and Kim Jong Un last month.

“Our goal remains the final, fully verified denuclearization of the DPRK, as agreed to by Chairman Kim in Singapore,” according to the statement. DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The meeting comes amid growing scrutiny of Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearization and as joint efforts to repatriate the remains of U.S. troops from North Korea are taking longer than many anticipated.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that U.S. intelligence officials had evidence showing that North Korea does not intend to give up its entire nuclear stockpile, despite Trump’s claim that there is “no longer a nuclear threat” from the country after the Singapore summit.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the Post’s report was accurate and that the assessment reflected the consistent view across U.S. government agencies for the past several weeks. The official was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.

Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, White House national security adviser John Bolton said that Pompeo would be “discussing this with the North Koreans in the near future about really how to dismantle all of their [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programs in a year.”