(CNN) The US and North Korea are seriously considering exchanging liaison officers, an incremental step towards building formal diplomatic relations, two sources with knowledge of the discussions told CNN.

News of the discussions comes days ahead of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's second summit, which is set to take place in Vietnam at the end of the month.

Trump and Kim met in Singapore last year, and both leaders there signed a joint statement that included commitments from each country "to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity."

This statement left the door open to some kind of re-establishment of formal relations if things were to go well, the sources said, adding that the current stalemate has left North Korea expecting some significant gesture on the part of the US.

The two high-level diplomatic sources said the first step forward could be the exchange of officers. On the US side, sources said there would be several liasion officers sent to set up office in North Korea, led by a senior foreign service officer who speaks Korean, if this plan were to move forward.

Read More</s>With the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un coming up, I was invited to speak last Wednesday at a conference at the International Christian University in Tokyo on North Korea. It was an excellent event, focusing explicitly on cutting through the grandiose rhetoric from the United States and South Korean presidents about North Korea’s denuclearization to determine what the North has actually done since detente started in January 2018.

The short answer is very little, and that is also likely to be the case after the Trump-Kim meeting in Hanoi next week. This is unfortunate, and there is much blame to go around. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has wildly over-hyped his outreach to the North as a “new era of peace” in Korean affairs.

Meanwhile Trump has shown his customary lack of focus and discipline in dealing with a complex issue. He announced the Hanoi meeting less than a month before it is to occur, all but ensuring that nothing substantive comes from it because there is simply not enough time to work out the many complicated issues of the U.S.-North Korean relationship.

But to be fair to Trump and Moon, the real reason denuclearization is very unlikely is that it ultimately makes good sense for North Korea to have nuclear weapons. We do not want the North to have them, of course, but from Pyongyang’s perspective, nuclear weapons are a great idea.

Nuclear weapons are so powerful that they provide excellent deterrence and defense against foreign opponents. For a small state like North Korea, surrounded by enemies and generally disliked by most states in the world, these weapons are a great strategic choice.

North Korea is small and weak. Its economy is one-twentyfifth the size of South Korea’s. It is poor and backward. It has few friends in the world. Even China and Russia approach North Korea opportunistically. They use North Korea to distract the Americans from Ukraine and the South China Sea for strategic reasons. But they have no warm feelings for a bizarre Orwellian tyranny that both China and Russia have left behind in their history.

North Korea also faces a powerful opponent in the U.S. And since the end of the Cold War, U.S. power has often been deployed against rogue states akin to North Korea. In the last 30 years, the U.S. has attacked countries as various as Panama, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush put North Korea on his “axis of evil” and said he “loathed” then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The North Koreans correctly learned the lesson from these American regime-change wars: that only nuclear weapons could permanently insure them against American force. They look to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who surrendered his nuclear weapons program to the Americans in the 2000s in exchange for security guarantees but was then overthrown and killed with U.S. help during the Arab Spring.

So if you are the ruling Kim family of North Korea, nuclear weapons are a great insurance policy. They provide a measure of regime security that no amount of American, South Korean and Japanese promises or money can replace.

Hence, despite all the meetings, summits and big talk, little has actually occurred in the last 14 months. North Korea is willing to bend on issues peripheral to the core nuclear weapons question. The North has evinced a willingness to shut down a nuclear material processing facility and a missile production facility. It has also shown a willingness to permit international inspectors of any final deal with the U.S. And it has cleaved to a self-imposed test ban of nuclear weapons and missiles.

All this is progress, and Moon and Trump deserve some limited praise for these steps. But on the core issues, the North Koreans have not moved at all, and they almost certainly will not barring enormous counter-concessions from the U.S.-South Korean-Japanese side.

By core issues, I mean four things: nuclear warheads, medium- and long-range missiles, missile launchers and other weapons of mass destructions (WMD), namely biological and chemical weapons. To date, unsurprisingly, the North has not surrendered any of these systems, nor have they even given the U.S. a roster or inventory of what they have. It is practically impossible to bargain with Pyongyang over WMDs when we do not even know what they have.

And this raises the absolute minimum agenda for Trump at Hanoi. At his first meeting with Kim in Singapore last summer, he did not get that inventory or list of weapons. Nor have Moon or U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo managed to claw it from Kim since Singapore.

Trump must absolutely get it this time. If the North Koreans are even remotely serious about denuclearization, this is the necessary first step. And if they are unwilling to part with it even after two one-on-one meetings with no less than the president of the United States, then they are not serious and Trump should not meet with Kim again. Two summits that produce little but photo-ops for North Korean propaganda is not worth it.

Given the huge regime security benefits of nuclear weapons discussed above, I personally doubt Kim will surrender an inventory. He will do as the North has done all year — dance around the core issues, offering smallish concessions like inter-Korean family reunions or facility closures — while avoiding the main issue: negotiating the removal of nuclear weapons from North Korea.

Hanoi is a test of this, likely the last test. I hope I am wrong, and that Trump somehow manages to pull out an inventory from Kim. But it is pretty unlikely. We likely need to adjust to the medium-term reality of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

Robert E. Kelly is a professor in the Department of Political Science of Pusan National University in South Korea. His Twitter address is @Robert_E_Kelly .</s>North Korea plans to join international efforts to implement a total ban on nuclear weapons tests, its ambassador told the United Nations today.

This comes just hours after satellite images appeared to show that the dictatorship has begun to dismantle a key nuclear test site in north-east North Korea.

Pyongyang has pledged dismantle the test site some time between May 23 and May 25 in order to uphold its pledge to cease tests, its state media reported on Saturday.

Earlier today, North Korea's ambassador to the UN in Geneva Han Tae-song announced the country's intentions to work towards a complete ban on tests.

'DPRK will join international desires and efforts for a total ban on nuclear tests,' Han Tae-song said in an address to the Conference on Disarmament, using North Korea's official acronym.

Han told the UN assembly that his country aimed to make more 'efforts to achieve the development of intra-Korean relations, defuse acute military tensions and substantially remove the danger of the war on the Korean peninsula.'

'It will make sincere efforts... to establish a durable lasting peace mechanism' with its neighbour to the south, he said, urging the international community to 'extend its active support in encouraging and promoting the current positive climate.'

The new satellite images from the North Korea's nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, appear to show building demolitions, removal of railways, and overturned mining carts.

The researchers are relying on commercial satellite imagery from May 7, according to the 38 North web site.

The site analyzed images which show significant changes that have been made at the location which are consistent with decommissioning.

'Between April 20 and May 7, 2018, the probable engineering office building and a possible instrumentation shed located just outside the North Portal (where the last five underground nuclear tests have been conducted) were razed along with at least two smaller buildings or sheds,' according to 38 North.

His comment came amid a recent whirlwind of diplomacy and outreach by the long isolated regime, and ahead of a historic summit next month between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.

Kim last month announced that his country would halt its own nuclear tests and intercontinental missile launches, which was widely hailed as an important step towards denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

But Pyongyang has yet to rejoin the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the international UN treaty aiming to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, which it withdrew from in 2003.

It is also one of eight countries with nuclear test capacity, including the United States, China and Iran, which have so far failed to either sign or ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, blocking it from taking effect.</s>MONTREAL/SEOUL (REUTERS) - The United States has blocked efforts by a US agency to improve civil aviation in North Korea at a time when Pyongyang is trying to reopen part of its airspace to foreign flights, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The US move is part of a negotiating tactic to maintain sanctions pressure on North Korea, one of the sources said, ahead of a second summit between President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam in late February.

Washington is seeking concrete commitments from Pyongyang at the summit to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes.

The United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), with 192 member countries, has been working with Pyongyang to open a new air route that would pass through North and South Korean airspace.

Airlines currently take indirect routings to avoid North Korea due to the threat of unannounced missile launches, which have been witnessed by some passengers on commercial flights.

If the space was deemed safe, international airlines could save fuel and time on some routes between Asia and Europe and North America, and North Korea could begin reviving its own commercial aviation industry.

The cash-strapped country has a population of more than 25 million but its economy has been squeezed by a series of sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Montreal-based ICAO was prepared to help improve North Korea's aviation system by leading training sessions between its military and civil aviation staff, two sources said.

North Korea also asked ICAO for access to US-produced aeronautical charts, they said.

But the United States discouraged the UN agency from helping North Korea with its air programme as Washington wanted to "pool all the leverages and incentives" until Pyongyang makes substantial progress on denuclearisation, a third source said.

"They would keep tight hold of all available leverage to make sure there is no loophole until the North Koreans take action that deserves a reward," the source said.

All sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

ICAO cannot impose binding rules on governments, but wields clout through its safety and security standards which are approved by its member states.

Asked for comment, a US State Department official said it does not publicly discuss details of diplomatic conversations. An ICAO spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment and there was no immediate reaction from South Korea's foreign ministry.

In 2017, the United States proposed the UN Security Council freeze the assets of state-carrier Air Koryo, which flies to a handful of cities in China and Russia, as part of new sanctions on Pyongyang. The measure was dropped during negotiations between the 15 members.

Airlines including Air Koryo and Air China Ltd offer less than 200,000 available seats a year in the North Korean market, according to a January note from independent research firm CAPA Centre for Aviation.

That compares with over 13 million seats available in the South Korean market, which has roughly double the population, CAPA said.

The biggest beneficiaries of lifting air restrictions over North Korea would be South Korean carriers including Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines Inc, according to CAPA.

The United States has doubled down on sanctions enforcement ahead of the planned second summit amid concerns Pyongyang is not committed to denuclearisation, though Washington promised to relax some rules on humanitarian aid.

South and North Korea, meanwhile, have rapidly advanced relations, which prompted US officials to openly warn against moving too quickly without sufficient progress on denuclearisation.

A fourth source told Reuters that the US move to facilitate humanitarian aid was intended to appease South Korea, facing some complaints that Washington is not willing to make any concessions.

"But they made it clear that there will be no relief of economic sanctions until they see substantial progress," said the source who also spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.</s>U.S., North Korea in talks to exchange diplomatic liaison officers, sources say

U.S., North Korea in talks to exchange diplomatic liaison officers, sources say

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN) – The United States and North Korea appear to be trying to make a diplomatic breakthrough.

Two sources with knowledge of the discussions say the two countries are talking about the possibility of exchanging liaison officers.

Such a move could begin the establishment of so-called “interest sections” in each other’s countries. An agreement to do just that was actually made back in 1994 and the U.S. went as far as to sign a lease for space in North Korea.

But North Korea called it off a year later, likely due to escalating tensions between the two countries.

Word of a new effort at diplomacy comes as President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un prepare for their second summit in Vietnam later this month.

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The United States is discussing exchanging liaison officers with North Korea.