Korean officials to discuss 3rd summit

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Senior officials from North and South Korea will meet next week to discuss the possibility of a third summit between their countries’ leaders, the South said Thursday.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, and President Moon Jae-in of the South have already met twice this year, in April and in May. South Korean officials have recently expressed interest in holding a third meeting soon, in hopes of breaking an impasse between North Korea and the United States over the dismantling of the North’s nuclear arms program.

Moon has accepted an invitation from Kim to visit Pyongyang in the fall. But no date has been set, and it is unclear whether the proposed third summit would be held there. A meeting at Panmunjom, the so-called truce village on the inter-Korean border where the previous talks were held, would take much less time to arrange.

The South’s Unification Ministry said Thursday that North Korea had proposed holding ministerial-level talks at Panmunjom on Monday to discuss preparations for another summit, and that South Korea had quickly accepted the offer.

At their April 27 meeting, which was the first time Kim and Moon met, the two reached a broad agreement on easing military tensions and improving their countries’ ties. They also said that “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula was a shared goal. That meeting, and the one that followed at Panmunjom on May 26, helped lay the groundwork for Kim’s talks with President Donald Trump on June 12 in Singapore.