White House: Pompeo to meet senior DPRK official

White House says Japan's Abe to visit US on June 7

WASHINGTON - The White House announced on Tuesday that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with a visiting senior official of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea later this week.

Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the DPRK's ruling Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee, is traveling to New York and will meet with Pompeo later this week, said White House Spokesperson Sarah Sanders in a statement.

The announcement followed a tweet from US President Donald Trump Tuesday morning, saying that Kim Yong Chol is "heading now to New York."

Sanders also revealed in the statement that a US delegation, headed by US veteran diplomat Sung Kim, was meeting with DPRK officials at the demilitarized zone, with more meetings expected later this week.

Sung Kim, now serving as US ambassador to the Philippines, was a former US ambassador to South Korea.

The spokeswoman also said that a US pre-advance team, led by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, was currently in Singapore coordinating the logistics of the expected summit.

John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, has had calls with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts "virtually every day," and these calls have been ongoing over the last couple of weeks, Sanders added.

The latest positive progress for the summit, originally scheduled on June 12 in Singapore, came after Trump canceled the meeting on Thursday, citing "tremendous anger and open hostility" displayed by Pyongyang recently.

Trump reversed course on Friday, saying both sides wanted the meeting to happen and it could still go ahead after productive talks. He also confirmed on Sunday that a US official team had arrived in the DPRK to talk about the preparation for talks.