South Korea welcomes prospect of 'reignited' US-North Korea talks
South Korea has welcomed the renewed prospect of a summit between the United States and North Korea after President Trump canceled talks with Kim Jong-un only to suggest later 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," South Korean Presidential Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said. Here's more.
South Korea brokered the US-North Korea detente
Trump's cancellation of the summit blindsided treaty ally South Korea, which brokered the remarkable Washington-Pyongyang detente. Korean President Moon Jae-in had to scramble his national security team when news of Trump's decision first reached Seoul as he called Washington's U-turn "shocking and very regrettable".
President Trump suggests meeting with Kim might happen as scheduled
After canceling the summit on Thursday, Trump turned on his heels again, on Friday, saying the meeting with Kim could go ahead after all - "likely" on the originally scheduled date of June 12 in Singapore. The summit would be an unprecedented meeting between a current US President and a North Korean leader, which Washington hopes will result in North Korea's full denuclearization.
South Korean President sought to calm Korean Peninsula tensions
President Moon has pushed diplomacy as he desperately sought to calm spiraling 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 and a series of intercontinental ballistic missile tests.
