North and South Korean leaders will meet in Pyongyang next month

North and South Korean leaders will meet next month for a third time amid growing fears that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has continued to pursue nuclear weapons even as denuclearization talks continue. Plans for leaders from the two nations to meet next month in Pyongyang, North Korea, were reached Monday after officials met in Panmunjom truce village, which sits inside the Demilitarized Zone, according to Reuters. Kim and South Korean president Moon Jae-in held a historic meeting last April, smiling shaking hands across their border in a dramatic warming of relations between the two nations, which technically remain at war. The two leaders planned to meet again in the fall. Kim and Moon met up again in an informal meeting in May, prior to U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Kim in Singapore. Moon played a crucial role in facilitating the summit between Trump and Kim, the first known meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. That summit ended with an agreement between Trump and Kim that North Korea would denuclearize, although that agreement contained little in the way of specifics. Since then, multiple media reports have shown North Korea apparently continuing work on nuclear weapons even as it continued to engage in talks with the U.S. The Washington Post reported in late July that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a facility where the country produced it's first intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. Intelligence officials obtained new evidence that showed North Korea is building one or two liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, the report also said. And in early July, The Wall Street Journal reported that North Korea was expanding a facility to build solid-fuel ballistic missiles. The Journal cited satellite imagery showing the bulk of new construction on the facility in Hamhung, North Korea, took place between April and June. source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/13/korean-leaders-meeting-september-pyongyang-774866 #Headlines by: rmorin@politico.com (Rebecca Morin)

Original Post: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/13/korean-leaders-meeting-september-pyongyang-774866