Moon seeks to send envoy to North Korea next week

A man reads a newspaper showing photos, from left of U.S. President Donald Trump, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Seoul, South Korea, April 11. AP-Yonhap

By Kim Yoo-chul

President Moon Jae-in wants to send a special envoy to North Korea sometime next week for talks on holding another summit with its leader Kim Jong-un, Cheong Wa Dae sources said Wednesday.

"Details about sending an envoy will be discussed at a National Security Office (NSO) meeting scheduled for Thursday at Cheong Wa Dae," a presidential aide told The Korea Times on condition of anonymity. "The initial plan is to send an envoy next week depending on North Korea's reaction."

Potential candidates include the country's spy chief Suh Hoon, former presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok and presidential NSO chief Chung Eui-yong, according to Cheong Wa Dae sources. President Moon left Chung at home while he visits three Central Asian countries. But the official said it hadn't been decided yet who the envoy would be.

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On a related note, Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said Seoul was reviewing "lots of options and scenarios" to make the fourth inter-Korean summit happen.

"What's being discussed inside the ministry is ways to revive the dialogue between the United States and North Korea. I hope Thursday's NSO meeting will cover lots of relevant issues," the minister told reporters on the sidelines of a security forum in Seoul.

President Moon said he's ready to hold a fourth summit with the North Korean leader to revive the nuclear diplomacy between the U.S. and the North. Moon said it was time to prepare for an inter-Korean summit and stressed the leaders of the two Koreas ought to meet for "concrete and substantive" discussions that could achieve progress beyond the U.S.-North Korea summits.

In this April 9, photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un addresses the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers Party of Korea in Pyongyang. AP-Yonhap

In a speech delivered at the North's rubber-stamp parliament last week, Kim said he was open to a third summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, setting "by the end of this year" as a deadline.

But he criticized President Moon, urging Seoul to stop acting like an "overstepping mediator" and calling on the President to speak up for the interests of the (Korean) nation. The criticism has been interpreted as the North's unwillingness to accept Seoul's special envoy, according to political analysts and experts here.

Moon and Kim met face-to-face three times last year and jump-started nuclear disarmament talks between Washington and Pyongyang following heightened tensions due to the North's provocations.

The leaders of the United States and North Korea met twice and at the first summit released a vaguely-worded statement about a nuclear-free peninsula without specifying when and how it would be achieved.

In Hanoi, the Trump-Kim summit failed to produce results as the two were unable to find common ground on how to define "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." The United States didn't accept the North's request for the easing of some economic sanctions in return for "completely dismantling" its major Yongbyon nuclear complex.