U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to return from North Korea with
three American detainees, as well as details of an upcoming summit between
leader
Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, a South Korean official
said on Wednesday.
Pompeo
arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday from Japan and headed to the Koryo Hotel in
the North Korean capital for meetings.
The top U.S.
diplomat and officials accompanying him were feted at a lunch by Kim Yong Chol,
a former spy chief and currently the North’s director of the United Front
Department which is responsible for inter-Korean relations.
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 finalize
the date of the summit and secure the release of the three American detainees.
While Trump
said it would be a “great thing” if the American detainees were freed, Pompeo
told reporters en route 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.”
At lunch on
Wednesday, Pompeo said the United States is committed to working with North
Korea to achieve peace on the Korean peninsula.
“I have high
expectations the United States will play a very big role in establishing peace
on the Korean peninsula,” said Kim, the former spy chief.
The remarks
were provided in a pool report.
In response,
Pompeo said the group with him was “equally committed to working with you to
achieve exactly” that.
“For
decades, we have been adversaries. Now we are hopeful that we can work together
to resolve this conflict, take away threats to the world and make your country
have all the opportunities your people so richly deserve,” Pompeo added.
The pending
U.S.-North Korea summit has sparked a flurry of diplomacy, with Japan, South
Korea and China holding a high-level meeting on Wednesday.
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 Jae-In, said his nation would normalize ties with North Korea if
the nuclear and missile issues, along with that of the abduction of Japanese
citizens, were solved comprehensively.
“We must
take the recent momentum toward denuclearization on the Korean peninsula and
toward peace and security in Northeast Asia, and, cooperating even further with
international society, make sure this is linked to concrete action by North
Korea,” Abe told a news conference after the meeting.
North Korea
has admitted to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens decades ago to train spies.
Five have returned to Japan.
The three
U.S. detainees still being held are Korean-American missionary Kim Dong-chul;
Kim Sang-duk, also known as Tony Kim, who spent a month teaching at the
foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) before he
was arrested in 2017; and Kim Hak-song, who also taught at PUST. (Reuters/NAN)
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