The truce between North Korea and United States is forging fast as President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are likely to meet in Singapore next month.
North Korea had been belligerent in world politics and had ambitious nuclear weapons build up that has infuriated the West over the years.
The country had earned a pariah status and slammed with several sanctions.
The sudden turn-around of 37-year-old Kim Jong Un to seek peace has been warmly embraced by USA and South Korea prompting much interest across the globe.
Trump said at the weekend that the two sides had settled on a date and location for the summit — the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader — without providing details.
“We’ll be announcing it soon,” Trump told reporters.
The landmark summit will take place in “mid-June”, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo daily reported Monday, citing diplomatic sources who quoted Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton.
The newspaper suggested that the possibility of Singapore hosting the landmark meeting had “increased greatly”, after a decision by Trump to host South Korean president Moon Jae-in at the White House later this month, without giving further explanation.
Bolton met his South Korean counterpart Chung Eui-yong in Washington late last week to discuss plans for both locations, according to local media reports.
A similar report on the weekend from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency also said Singapore was firming as the favoured location for the summit.
Trump had previously suggested that the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas — the site of a recent summit between Kim and Moon — could also be an appropriate venue for his meeting with the North’s leader.
Other possible sites reportedly included Mongolia and Switzerland.
Preparations for the landmark meeting have gained momentum since the Korean summit late last month, which saw Pyongyang and Seoul promise to pursue the complete denuclearisation of the peninsula and a formal peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.
The grandson of Kim Il-sung, the first leader of North Korea from 1948 to 1994 and Kim Jong Un was the first North Korean leader to have been born after the country’s founding.
Before taking power in 2011, Kim was rarely seen in public, and many of the activities of Kim and his government remain unknown.
Even details such as what year he was born, and whether he did indeed attend a Western school under a pseudonym, are difficult to confirm.
-NAN
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