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2nd Trump-Kim summit to take place in late February

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Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party Central Committee, delivers a letter from the regime's leader Kim Jong-un to U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, Saturday (local time). Kim Yong-chol visited Washington as a nuclear envoy, discussing schedules and agendas for an upcoming second summit between Trump and Kim. / Screen capture from Twitter
Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party Central Committee, delivers a letter from the regime's leader Kim Jong-un to U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, Saturday (local time). Kim Yong-chol visited Washington as a nuclear envoy, discussing schedules and agendas for an upcoming second summit between Trump and Kim. / Screen capture from Twitter

'A lot of progress' with North: Trump

By Lee Min-hyung

U.S. President Donald Trump will hold a much-anticipated second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in late February, Trump confirmed Saturday (local time), signaling hopes for rapid progress in their stalled denuclearization talks.

"We have agreed to meet sometime, probably the end of February," Trump told reporters.

The remark came a day after he met with North Korean envoy Kim Yong-chol at the White House. The top negotiator of the North visited Washington for a three-day trip to possibly discuss detailed schedules and agendas for the upcoming summit. In a meeting with Trump, Kim Yong-chol delivered a letter from the regime's young leader.

Trump went on to say that both sides fixed a location for the meeting and will announce it "in the future."

"Kim Jong-un is looking very forward to it and so am I," Trump said. "We have made a lot of progress as far as denuclearization is concerned and we are talking about a lot of different things. Things are going very well with North Korea."

Speculation has been rampant over the timeline and location for the Washington-Pyongyang summit, as Trump has in recent weeks declined to confirm the details despite signs indicating the meeting is imminent.

Even if nothing official has been confirmed, Vietnam is seen as the most probable venue for the upcoming summit, with the country reportedly engaging in "logistical preparations" for the meeting by repeatedly expressing its interest in hosting the event.

It is likely that Washington and Pyongyang may have picked either Vietnam's capital city of Hanoi or port city of Danang for the venue of their second meeting. This is because the country is not far away from Pyongyang and has enough experiences in hosting large-scale international events.

As of Sunday, North Korea has yet to report anything on the upcoming Washington-Pyongyang summit. But chances are the regime will announce the second summit in a couple of weeks, as it did in late May last year when its state-controlled Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong-un expressed his firm determination for the June 12 summit with the U.S.

Working-level dialogue

Keen attention is being drawn to possible agendas for the summit at a time when the U.S. and North Korea fail to make any progress in their stalled denuclearization talks following their first summit.

Starting Saturday (local time in Sweden), working-level delegations from Washington and Pyongyang have kicked off four days of discussion to fine-tune their differences on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Steve Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, led the delegation from Washington, while North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui headed his side. A South Korean delegation, led by Lee Do-hoon, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, also took part in the ongoing working-level talks.

In particular, this is the first time the heads of the working-level delegations from Washington and Pyongyang have held a face-to-face discussion since Biegun was appointed last August.

In October, Biegun expressed his hopes to meet with Choe in Vienna to narrow their differences on their stalled denuclearization talks. But the meeting was not arranged in the end, with the North keeping silent over the proposal.

During the ongoing closed-door meetings, delegations from Washington will likely offer a series of its possible bargaining chips to keep the regime at the denuclearization dialogue table. In December, Biegun underlined the need to provide humanitarian aid to the North.

North Korea, for its part, will also demand the U.S. take what the regime calls "reciprocal steps" in line with the North's phased denuclearization. The steps are likely to include the North's exemptions from international sanctions.

It remains to be seen whether both sides can narrow their differences during the first-ever meeting. But chances are that they will reach a broad agreement on a possible agenda and framework for the upcoming summit.


Lee Min-hyung mhlee@koreatimes.co.kr


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