SEOUL: North Korea lashed out at the US for risking stability on the Korean peninsula Thursday, even as Pyongyang and Seoul push towards a third leadership summit.
The uneasy neighbours will hold high-level talks next week to prepare for a meeting between the South’s President Moon Jae-in and the North’s leader Kim Jong Un, Seoul said on Thursday, as a diplomatic rapprochement takes hold.
But the North Korean foreign ministry issued an angry statement hours later warning that Washington’s push for full sanctions pressure against Pyongyang would stall progress on denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
“There is no guarantee that the hard-won atmosphere of stability on the Korean Peninsula will continue,” it said.
Although the South’s unification ministry did not elaborate on where the next summit would take place, Moon had previously agreed to visit Kim in Pyongyang during the autumn after the two leaders held a historic meeting in April.
In a statement the ministry said the two sides would hold high-level talks on Monday on the Northern side of the truce village of Panmunjom to “discuss preparatory matters regarding a South-North summit”.
The overture came from Pyongyang, Seoul said, which suggested Thursday the two sides hold talks to “review progress” since the April summit that paved the way for a landmark meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.
At the Singapore summit, Kim made a vague commitment to denuclearisation — far from the longstanding US demand for the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal.
Cross-border exchanges between the two Koreas have significantly increased since then, with the neighbours planning to hold reunions for war-separated families later this month for the first time in three years.
The South Korean delegation at Monday’s meeting will be led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, who visited Pyongyang last month to attend a friendly basketball match between the two Koreas, Seoul said.
“We will hold in-depth discussions with the North for a successful South-North summit,” the ministry said.