North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has hosted a dinner for senior South Korean delegates – the first time officials from Seoul have met the young leader since he took office in 2011.<\/p>\n
The South Korean president’s office confirmed the meeting shortly after the delegates’ arrival on Monday.<\/p>\n
The 10-member team is in Pyongyang for talks partly aimed at restarting dialogue between the North and the US.<\/p>\n
Relations between the Koreas have warmed following last month’s Olympics.<\/p>\n
In an unprecedented move, the South Korean delegation includes two ministerial-level envoys – intelligence chief Suh Hoon and National Security adviser Chung Eui-yong.<\/p>\n
North Korean state radio earlier said the delegation was met at the airport by Ri Son-gwon, North Korea’s reunification chief, who led talks in the weeks before the Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
During the two-day visit, the South Korean group will focus on establishing conditions for talks aimed at getting rid of the North’s nuclear weapons as well as dialogue between the US and Pyongyang.<\/p>\n
Mr Chung had earlier told a press briefing he would deliver President Moon Jae-in’s “resolution to maintain the dialogue and improvement in relations between the South and the North… [and] to denuclearize the Korean peninsula”.<\/p>\n
“I plan to hold in-depth discussions on various ways to continue talks between not only the South and the North, but also the North and the United States,” he added.<\/p>\n
‘US is not interested in talks’<\/strong><\/p>\n US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US would be prepared to meet North Korea, but reiterated that Pyongyang would first have to “denuke”.<\/p>\n However, North Korea – which has said it wants to talk to the US – said it was “preposterous” for the US to insist on preconditions.<\/p>\n “The US attitude shown after we clarified our intention for dialogue compels us to only think that the US is not interested in resuming… dialogue,” said the foreign ministry in a statement reported by state media.<\/p>\n It remains unclear who would represent the US in any such meeting.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has hosted a dinner for senior South Korean delegates – the first time officials from Seoul have met the young leader since he took office in 2011. The South Korean president’s office confirmed the meeting shortly after the delegates’ arrival on Monday. The 10-member team is in Pyongyang for talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":406689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[160],"class_list":["post-406688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-north-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/406689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}