Russia’s foreign minister has accepted an invitation to visit North Korea in a display of the two countries’ warm relations as Kim Jong-un negotiates a meeting with US President Donald Trump.
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Long-serving minister Sergei Lavrov said he had agreed to travel to Pyongyang for the first time in almost a decade during talks in Moscow with his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho. He last visited North Korea in 2009.
He also said the United States should offer an “ironclad” guarantee of North Korea’s security as part of any denuclearisation talks.
The announcement of Mr Lavrov’s visit came after Mr Kim spoke for the first time about his forthcoming talks with the US, finally breaking his public silence a full month after Mr Trump stunned the world by agreeing to meet at a historic face-to-face summit.
Mr Trump said on Monday that he expected to meet Mr Kim in May or early June, expressing hope that they would reach a deal on “denuking” the Korean peninsula.
On Tuesday, North Korea’s official newswire, KCNA, revealed that the young leader had discussed the “development of the north-south relations at present and the prospect of the DPRK-US dialogue” at a meeting of party officials, referring to the North by its official acronym.
He also delivered a report on developments around the Korean peninsula, including the separate summit with South Korea to be held later this month, KCNA said.
Amid a rapidly moving diplomatic rapprochement on the Korean peninsula, Mr Kim will meet Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, on the highly militarised border separating the two countries on April 27.
However, CNN reported at the weekend that Mike Pompeo, Central Intelligence Agency director, and a team of officials were already working through back channels to make preparations for this summit, with the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, raised as a possible location.
Both summits, if they go ahead, will be the culmination of a surprising and rapid détente between Pyongyang and South Korea and its allies.
North Korean missile ranges
The thaw began when Kim Jong-un offered an olive branch to Seoul in January by agreeing to send a delegation of musicians, cheerleaders and athletes to South Korea’s Winter Olympics in February.
Seoul reciprocated at the start of April by sending a 160-strong delegation of K-pop groups and singers to perform at their first concerts in Pyongyang in over a decade.
Rights groups have cautioned, however, that the dire human rights situation in North Korea should not be overlooked amid a diplomatic rush towards resolving the thorny issue of Pyongyang’s nuclear and weapons programme.
Korea Pool via AP
As images of a beaming Kim Jong-un at a K-pop concert at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre on April 1 made headline news, the reality of embracing South Korean songs was very different for four North Korean teenagers reportedly detained for dancing to them.
Six teens aged 16 and 17 in the northern Yangang Province were subjected to a public trial on March 22 for listening and dancing to dozens of K-pop songs, before distributing them to others on a flash drive, reported Japanese paper, the Asahi Shimbun.
Four of them are said to have been found guilty of “anti-national” conspiracy and sentenced to a year of labour. The fate of the other two defendants is unknown but the entire group was sent to an offenders institution after the trial, said the report.