US, South Korean diplomats meet ahead of Trump-Kim summit
AP
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US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun is questioned by reporters at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea on February 3, 2019. (Photo: AP)

Senior US and South Korean officials met Sunday to discuss an expected second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump’s special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, arrived in South Korea earlier amid reports that he’ll meet North Korean officials soon to work out details for the summit.

Trump told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “the meeting is set” with Kim, but he provided no further details about the meeting expected around the end of February. The president said there was “a very good chance that we will make a deal.”

With the North under economic penalties and the US unwilling to ease them under the North denuclearizes, Trump said Kim “has a chance to have North Korea be a tremendous economic behemoth. It has a chance to be one of the great economic countries in the world. He can’t do that with nuclear weapons and he can’t do that on the path they’re on now.”

Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Biegun and his South Korean counterpart Lee Do-hoon held consultations about working-level US-North Korea talks ahead of the summit.

South Korean media reported Biegun and his North Korean counterpart Kim Hyok Chol will likely meet at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom or in the North’s capital of Pyongyang early this week.

Little progress has been made toward ridding North Korea of its nuclear weapons since Trump and Kim held their first summit in Singapore last June. During that summit, Kim pledged to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, though he did not provide a timetable or roadmap for his disarmament steps.

Last year, North Korea suspended nuclear and missile tests, dismantled its nuclear test site and parts of its rocket launch facility and released American detainees. The North demanded the United States to take corresponding measurers such as sanctions relief.