North and South leaders agree to convene summit

SEOUL — The rival Koreas announced Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Pyongyang sometime in September, while their envoys also discussed Pyongyang’s nuclear disarmament efforts and international sanctions.

The push for what would be the leaders’ third summit since April comes amid renewed worries surrounding a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.

The announcement released after nearly two hours of talks led by the rivals’ chiefs for interKorean affairs was thin on details. In a threesentence joint statement, the two sides did not mention an exact date for the summit and provided no details on how to implement past agreements.

The meeting at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom comes as the international community waits to see if North Korea will begin abandoning its nuclear weapons program, something officials suggested would happen after Kim’s summit with President Trump in June in Singapore.

North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and long-range missiles and to be closing in on the ability to reliably target anywhere on the U.S. mainland. A string of North Korean weapons tests last year, during which Pyongyang claimed to have completed its nuclear arsenal, had many in Asia worried that Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war.

The South Korean unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, said the two sides also discussed international sanctions meant to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons, but he didn’t elaborate.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease the economic punishments, but the United States says that can’t happen until the North completely denuclearizes.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States. The North said it was making efforts to disarm, but Cho said there were no new details on those efforts.

Experts say there has been slow progress on those efforts since the Singapore summit. Pyongyang has urged Washington to reciprocate its goodwill gestures, which include suspending missile and nuclear tests and returning the remains of Americans who fought in the Korean War. Washington, which canceled an annual joint military exercise with South Korea that had taken place in August in previous years, has refused to ease sanctions until North Korea finally and fully denuclearizes. Youkyung Lee