SKorea’s Moon May Join US, NKorea at Summit

President Donald Trump has confirmed that top North Korean official Kim Yong Chol is heading to NY for talks on an upcoming summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “real progress” had been made in NY talks with Kim’s right-hand man, while in Pyongyang the Korean leader re-committed to “denuclearization”.

During a campaign rally in Atlanta in June 2016, Trump said he would want to talk nukes with Kim over burgers and fries.

A major sticking point at the proposed summit is expected to be how to denuclearise the North.

Trump said there was a “lot of goodwill” for the meeting.

“The United States continues to actively prepare for President Trump’s expected summit with leader Kim in Singapore”, she said in a statement Tuesday.

Secretary Pompeo is also heading to NY this week to meet a top North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol. Associated Press journalists saw the plane taxi down the tarmac before the North’s delegation disembarked at JFK International Airport.

“Our United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself”, Trump tweeted.

“If the report that Kim Yong Chol is on his way to Washington is true, we now know that the main discussion of the agenda and any possible deal will take place there, not in Panmunjom”.

The United States and the United Nations over the last several years have been able to ban most of North Korea’s trade and cut off a large portion its foreign income stream – including getting China to reduce trade. Thank you very much, Scott.

Kim Yong Chol’s official title is a vice chairman of the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party.

Details of Pompeo’s meet with Kim Yong Chol were not immediately clear.

A US media report said a USA delegation led by Sung Kim, a former ambassador to South Korea and former nuclear negotiator with the North, met with Choe Son Hui, a North Korean vice foreign minister, after crossing the line that separates the two Koreas on Sunday. It includes senior officials with the National Security Council and the Pentagon.

May 22: South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Trump met in Washington.

On Monday, veteran American diplomat Sung Kim led an American delegation to Panmunjom at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) for talks with North Korean officials. South Korean media speculated that Pompeo could make a third trip to Pyongyang and that Kim Yong Chol was carrying a personal letter from Kim Jong Un and might push to travel to Washington to meet with Trump.

Trump on Thursday called off his scheduled summit with Kim, citing the North’s tremendous anger and open hostility, only to suggest later the meeting would go ahead as planned.

“What Kim is unclear about is that he has concerns about whether his country can surely trust the United States over its promise to end hostile relations (with North Korea) and provide a security guarantee if they do denuclearization”, Moon said.

President Donald Trump says negotiations over a potential summit with the leader of North Korea are “going along very well”.

He is among a small group of North Korean officials who have accompanied Kim Jong Un to all four of his summits with foreign leaders in recent months – twice with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and twice with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We continue to prepare for a meeting between the President and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un”.

He has served three generations of the Kim dynasty and in recent months emerged one of the most powerful figures in Kim Jong-un’s regime, second only to the leader’s sister, Kim Yo-jong.

Estimates say almost half of North Korean transactions are made in foreign currency, commonly the Chinese yuan. Any visit to the United States would indicate a waiver was granted.