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South Korea welcomes prospect of ‘reignited’ US-North Korea talks

South Korea on Saturday welcomed the renewed prospect of a summit between the United States and North Korea after President Trump cancelled talks with Kim Jong-un only to suggest they might still take place.

South Korea welcomes prospect of ‘reignited’ US-North Korea talks

(FILES)(COMBO) This combination of file pictures created on May 24, 2018 shows US President Donald Trump at the National Building Museum May 22, 2018 in Washington, DC, and an undated photo released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 10, 2016 of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un on May 9, 2016. (Photo: AFP PHOTO / AFP PHOTO AND KCNA VIA KNS / Brendan Smialowski AND KCNA / South Korea OUT / REPUBLIC OF KOREA)

South Korea on Saturday welcomed the renewed prospect of a summit between the United States and North Korea after President Trump cancelled talks with Kim Jong-un only to suggest they might still take place.

“We find it fortunate that the embers of the North Korea-US talks are reignited. We are watching developments carefully,” Presidential Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-gyeom said.

On Saturday, Donald Trump took to Twitter to inform that talks with North Korea are on to bring the shelved meeting back on track.

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“We are having very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the Summit which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th., and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date,” he wrote.

 

Trump’s cancellation of the summit blindsided treaty ally South Korea, which had brokered the remarkable detente between Washington and Pyongyang.

President Moon Jae-in had to scramble his national security team when news of Trump’s decision first reached Seoul late Thursday evening as he called Washington’s u-turn “shocking and very regrettable”.

Yesterday, Trump turned on his heels again, saying the meeting with Kim could go ahead after all – and would “likely” happen on the originally scheduled date of June 12 in Singapore.

The summit would be an unprecedented meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader, which Washington hopes will result in full denuclearisation of the reclusive state.

South Korea’s Moon has pushed diplomacy as he desperately sought to calm spiralling tensions on the Korean Peninsula and an escalating war of words between Kim and Trump last year sparked by Pyongyang’s detonation of its largest nuclear bomb to date and a series of intercontinental ballistic missile tests.

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