Trump to meet South Korean president on April 11 at White House

Washington: US President Donald Trump will meet his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the White House on April 11 to discuss their efforts to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula and bilateral issues.

The White House said in a statement on Thursday that Moon and first lady Kim Jung-sook will visit the White House on April 11.

“The alliance between the US and the Republic of Korea remains the linchpin of peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the region. This visit will strengthen this alliance and the friendship between the two countries,” she said.

Moon was instrumental in brokering talks between Washington and the nuclear-armed and sanctions-hit North Korea.

The two presidents will meet a little more than a month after Trump held his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, Vietnam.

However, the US-North Korea summit ended abruptly without a deal, with the US president saying he had decided to “walk” in the face of Kim’s demands to drop sanctions.

The much-anticipated second meeting between the two leaders was supposed to build on their historic first summit in Singapore in June last year.

Trump and Kim signed a vaguely worded agreement at their first summit in Singapore pledging to work toward full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Members of Trump’s administration, meanwhile, acknowledge North Korea is still developing a nuclear weapons programme and US sanctions on the country remain in place.

While North Korea has refrained from overtly provocative actions like testing nuclear warheads or ballistic missiles, it has yet to agree to actually give up any piece of its atomic arsenal.

The last nuclear test North Korea conducted was in September 2017. The regime also launched an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017. Some experts say the regime no longer needs to conduct such tests because of advances in its nuclear weapons programme.