ROK's president says to push for summit with DPRK leader

SEOUL - The Republic of Korea (ROK)'s President Moon Jae-in said Monday that he will actively push for another summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), to help resume dialogue between the DPRK and the United States.

"Now, it's time to actively prepare and push for South-North summit," Moon told a regular meeting with his senior secretaries, referring to the fourth summit between the ROK and the DPRK. The leaders of the two Koreas held summit talks three times last year.

Moon said he hoped to make concrete and effective discussions with Kim "in any place and formality at the DPRK's convenience" about ways to bear advanced fruits going beyond the past two DPRK-US summits.

The comment came after Moon visited Washington last week for summit talks with US President Donald Trump.

Moon said his Washington meeting with Trump was aimed to remove uncertainties, raised after the second summit between Kim and Trump, and restore the momentum of dialogue between the DPRK and the United States for the unwavering push for the peace process on the Korean Peninsula.

The second Kim-Trump summit ended with no agreement in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. After the Hanoi summit, Moon vowed to help resume dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington.

After the meeting with Moon, Trump said in Washington that "smaller deals" could happen "step by step" between the DPRK and the United States, though his country and ROK were focusing on "the big deal".

"The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," Trump explained.

The DPRK leader said in his policy speech marking the First Session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) on Friday that he was willing to hold one more summit with Trump "if the United States adopts a correct posture and comes to the third DPRK-US summit with a certain methodology that can be shared".

Kim noted that he would wait for a "bold decision" from Trump with patience by the end of this year, saying both Pyongyang and Washington should try to find out a "constructive solution to meet each other's interests".

In response, Trump tweeted Saturday that a third summit with Kim "would be good in that we fully understand where we each stand".