Moon to send special envoy to N.Korea next week

South Korean President Moon Jae-in will send a special envoy to Pyongyang next Wednesday to discuss plans to hold a summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un and nuclear disarmament, Moon’s office said Friday.

The unnamed envoy will visit the North’s capital on September 5, Moon’s spokesperson Kim Euikyeom told reporters, adding it had not been decided yet who the envoy would be.

Seoul proposed the envoy’s visit Friday morning and Pyongyang accepted it a few hours later, he said.

Potential candidates include South Korea’s spy chief Suh Hoon and Moon’s national security advisor Chung Eui-yong, according to mul- tiple local media reports.

“The envoy will have broad discussions over a detailed schedule for the inter-Korea summit, development of bilateral ties... and nuclear disarmament of the Korean peninsula,” the spokesperson said.

Moon and Kim have met faceto-face twice now, the first during a historic summit at the border truce village of Panmunjom in April.

It was the first time a North Korean leader had ever crossed into the South after the 1950-53 war that divided the Korean Peninsula.

They met a second time in Panmunjom as they scrambled to salvage a summit between Kim and US president Donald Trump in Singapore.

They have since agreed to hold a third summit in Pyongyang at an unspecified date in September.

Friday’s announcement came as US efforts to tame North Korea have stalled for weeks.

In June, Trump and Kim vowed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” although their joint statement was short on details for how that was to be achieved.

Moon has persistently pressed for the resumption of cross-border cooperation, putting his administration at odds with Washington.

Moon’s office said last week it may delay the imminent opening of a liaison office in North Korea, after the abrupt cancellation of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Pyongyang trip.