SEOUL, June 4, 2018 (BSS/Xinhua)- Top diplomats of South Korea and the United States held a phone conversation on Monday over a summit between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States that got back on track over the weekend.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha talked over the phone with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for about 15 minutes in the morning, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.
Kang and Pompeo exchanged opinions over the recent progress in the DPRK-US summit, including the visit by Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee of the DPRK, to Washington to meet US President Donald Trump.
After meeting with the ranking DPRK official, Trump said Friday that he will meet top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un on June 12 in Singapore as originally scheduled.
The DPRK official, who held a two-day meeting with Pompeo in New York before heading to Washington, delivered the DPRK leader’s personal letter to the US president.
The foreign ministers of Seoul and Washington made an in-depth discussion on how to prepare for the DPRK-US summit successfully, agreeing to seek ways through close consultations to achieve a complete denuclearization and a lasting peace settlement on the Korean Peninsula.
Meanwhile, an unnamed official of the presidential Blue House of South Korea told local reporters that Seoul and Washington have been closely communicating over the DPRK-US summit.
Asked about whether to hold the three-way summit in Singapore between South Korea, the DPRK and the United States after the first-ever DPRK-US summit on June 12, the Blue House official said South Korea had yet to launch preparations for the three-party summit.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said recently that he had anticipation for the three-way summit to be held to declare an official end to the 1950-53 Korean War. The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war as the Korean War ended with an armistice.
After the April 27 inter-Korean summit, Moon and Kim agreed to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and turn the current armistice agreement to a peace treaty by the end of this year.
The back-on-track summit between Pyongyang and Washington followed recent twists and turns and the whirlwind of diplomacy.
Trump abruptly cancelled his meeting with the DPRK leader in May, but the DPRK said the country was ready to sit down with the United States any time in any manner.
Trump reversed course soon after, saying both sides wanted the meeting to happen and it could still go ahead after productive talks.
Multi-track talks between officials from the DPRK and the United States had been held last week in New York, the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom and Singapore.