Pompeo back in North Korea
Release of US detainees, Trump summit details expected
SEOUL: United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to return from North Korea with three American detainees, as well as details of a summit between leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump, a South Korean official said yesterday.
Pompeo arrived in Pyongyang yesterday from Japan and headed to the Koryo Hotel in the North Korean capital for meetings, a US media pool report said.
Trump earlier broke the news of Pompeo’s second visit to North Korea in less than six weeks and said the two countries had agreed on a date and location for the summit, although he stopped short of providing details.
An official at South Korea’s presidential Blue House said Pompeo was expected to finalise the date of the summit and secure the release of the detainees.
While Trump said it would be a ‘‘great thing’’ if the detainees were freed, Pompeo told reporters on the way to Pyongyang he had not received such a commitment but hoped North Korea would ‘‘do the right thing’’.
‘‘We’ll talk about it again today,’’ he said.
‘‘I think it’d be a great gesture if they would choose to do so.’’
The pending USNorth Korea summit has sparked a flurry of diplomacy, with Japan, South Korea and China holding a highlevel meeting yesterday.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said concerned parties should seize the opportunity to promote denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who attended the meeting along with South Korean President Moon JaeIn, said his nation would normalise ties with North Korea if the nuclear and missile issues, along with that of the abduction of Japanese citizens, were solved.
North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens decades ago to train spies. Five have returned to Japan.
The three US detainees still being held are KoreanAmerican missionary Kim Dongchul; Kim Sangduk, also known as Tony Kim, who spent a month teaching at the foreignfunded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology before he was arrested in 2017; and Kim Haksong, who also taught there. —