South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the North Korean capital later this month to discuss ways to "denuclearize the Korean Peninsula," Moon's special envoy to Pyongyang said Thursday.

At a news conference aired on South Korean TV and reported by the South Korean news agency Yonhap, the envoy, Chung Eui-yong, said the meeting — the third between the two leaders — would be Sept. 18 to 20 in Pyongyang.

"High-level negotiations" to work out the details will begin next week, Chung, the head of South Korea's National Security Office, said a day after he returned from leading a delegation to the North.

Kim and Moon previously met in the border village of Panmunjom on May 26 and on April 27, when they signed a historic declaration pledging a common goal of "complete denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula.

Chung said Kim reaffirmed again this week his commitment to denuclearization and promised to work with the United States to that end, Yonhap reported.

The Korean Central News Agency, Pyongyang's official news service, reported that Kim reassured the delegation that he remains eager to "completely remove the danger of armed conflict and horror of war from the Korean Peninsula and turn it into the cradle of peace without nuclear weapons and free from nuclear threat," according to Yonhap.

U.S. officials have insisted that a peace declaration, which many see as a precursor to the North eventually calling for the removal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, can't come before North Korea takes more concrete action toward abandoning its nuclear weapons.

Such steps may include providing an account of the components of its nuclear program, allowing outside inspections and giving up a certain number of its nuclear weapons during the early stages of the negotiations.

South Korean officials said an end-of-war declaration would be among the issues discussed in the meetings between the South Korean envoys and North Korean officials.

The Korean War ended with an armistice, leaving the peninsula technically still at war. Moon has made an end-of-war declaration an important premise of his peace agenda with North Korea.

While an end-of-war declaration wouldn't imply a legally binding peace treaty, experts say it could create political momentum that would make it easier for North Korea to steer the discussions toward a peace regime, diplomatic recognition, economic benefits and security concessions.

North Korea has accused the United States of making "unilateral and gangster-like" demands for denuclearization and of holding back on the end-of-war declaration. North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday published a long statement on its website saying an end-of-war declaration would be a necessary trust-building step that would "manifest the political will to establish the lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula."</s>iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — During a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, President Donald Trump said that he is expecting a new letter from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, to be delivered to him by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The president, who has been exchanging letters and Twitter messages with Kim about a potential denuclearization deal, made the remarks as he traveled to a campaign event in Fargo, North Dakota.

“I know that a letter, a personal letter, is being delivered to me from Kim Jong Un that was handed at the border yesterday,” Trump said.

Trump said he thinks it is going to be a “positive letter.”

On Thursday, a South Korean envoy who recently returned from meeting with Kim in Pyongyang said that the communist leader reiterated his commitment to denuclearize “if the countermeasures are taken simultaneously.”

The envoy said Kim told him he hoped to have complete denuclearization and end the hostile relationship between North Korea and the United States before 2021.

“Yesterday he said I want to make this deal and denuclearize during President Trump’s administration, so let’s see what happens,” Trump told reporters.

“But he did write me a letter and the letter’s being delivered to me, I think it’s being brought in by Mike Pompeo,” Trump said.

Trump, who met with Kim face to face in Singapore earlier this summer to begin the long denuclearization process, admitted the relationship started out “very rough” but said the “rhetoric between myself and Kim has been very good.”

The president gushed about Kim on Twitter Thursday following news that Kim wants to reach an agreement before the end of Trump’s first term.

“Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!” Trump tweeted.

It was a dramatic change in tone from just two weeks ago when the president called off a meeting between Pompeo and Kim citing a lack of “sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization.”

The president seemed pleased with news of a new letter from Kim, even noting that it’s being delivered in an “elegant way” — that is, not electronically.

“It’s actually the way it used to be many years ago before we had all of the new contraptions that we all use.”

The president himself does not use a computer.</s>North Korea's Kim Jong Un has given his first timeline for denuclearization.

Kim says he's aiming for the end of President Donald Trump's first term, Seoul officials said on Thursday.

Kim told South Korean officials his faith in Trump was "unchanged" and that he wanted denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and an end to hostile relations with the United States.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims 'unwavering faith in President Trump.' Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!" the president wrote.

You may recall, President Trump had previously hailed his landmark June 12 summit with Kim as a success and said the North Korean nuclear threat was over, despite little evidence to back that assertion.

North Korean experts say Kim desperately wants some move toward peace with the United States.

"I think if were able to do that, I think we can go back to Kim Jong Un and say okay the Korean War is over. But at the same time you need to give us some sort of declaration of the size, scope, and scale of your nuclear weapons and missile programs," said Harry Kazianis, Director of Defense Studies at the Center for the National Interest.

Weeks ago, President Trump stopped Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from making a planned trip to the North, saying the timing was not right.

Pompeo, visiting New Delhi, said there was a long road ahead and "an enormous amount of work to do" on the denuclearization process.

"It is the case there is still an enormous amount of work to do," said Pompeo. "We haven't had any nuclear tests, we haven't had any missile tests, which we consider a good thing. But the work of convincing Chairman Kim to make the strategic shift that we talked for a brighter future for the people of North Korea continues."

Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Pyongyang on Sept. 18-20 for a third summit and discuss "practical measures" toward denuclearization, Moon's national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, said a day after meeting Kim.

The summit could provide renewed momentum to talks over denuclearization between North Korea and the United States.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced charges Thursday against an alleged hacker for the North Korean government in connection with a series of major cyberattacks including the 2014 assault on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

This is the first time the United States has brought such charges against a Pyongyang operative.

Park Jin Hyok, officials said, is accused of being part of a conspiracy to hack on behalf of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, the military intelligence agency that controls most of the country's cyber capabilities.

"North Korea's economy is the size of Vermont about $11 billion dollars. They can barely feed their own people. Yet their cyber capabilities are world class," said Kazianis.

He and other unidentified operatives are accused of being members of the Lazarus Group, which also has been implicated in the audacious attempt to steal $1 billion from the Bangladesh Bank in 2016, and to the WannaCry 2.0 virus that affected more than 230,000 computers in 150 countries last year.

Lazarus Group hackers, officials say, broke into the bank's computers and manipulated its access to a global electronic messaging system known as SWIFT, which banks use to send and receive money transfers.

 

 Pyongyang has denied allegations of hacking.

The Treasury Department on Thursday also imposed sanctions against Park and the Chosun Expo Joint Venture, a state-owned firm that employed him in Dalian, China.

"We will not allow North Korea to undermine global cybersecurity to advance its interests and generate illicit revenues in violation of our sanctions," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "The United States is committed to holding the regime accountable for its cyberattacks and other crimes and destabilizing activities."</s>SEOUL, KOREA, REPUBLIC OF—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed faith in an increasingly embattled President Donald Trump’s efforts to settle a nuclear impasse even as he signalled frustration at outside skepticism about his disarmament intentions and demanded that his “goodwill measures” be met in kind, South Korean officials said Thursday after travelling to Pyongyang to meet Kim. The trove of comments from Kim, including his commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and to the suspension of all future long-range missile tests, was filtered through the liberal South Korean government, which is keen on keeping engagement alive, and also through Kim’s propaganda specialists in Pyongyang. But, even in their indirect form, each statement will be parsed for clues about the future of nuclear diplomacy amid a growing standoff with the United States on how to proceed with negotiations meant to settle a dispute that had many fearing war last year.

Only hours before they briefed the media in Seoul, a South Korean delegation returned from talks with Kim where they set up a summit for Sept. 18-20 in Pyongyang between the North Korean leader and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, their third meeting since April. South Korean officials said they forwarded a message from Trump to Kim during their meeting and would send a separate message from Kim to Trump later Thursday. The officials wouldn’t discuss the content of the messages. Some of Kim’s reported comments — his commitment to a nuclear-free Korea, for instance — were reiterations of past stances, but there will be sharp interest in whether they push negotiators back to diplomacy after the recriminations that followed Kim’s meeting in June with Trump in Singapore. The impasse between North Korea and the United States, with neither side seemingly willing to make any substantive move, has generated widespread skepticism over Trump’s claims that Kim will really dismantle his nuclear weapons program. Despite Kim’s repeated denuclearization commitments, recent satellite photos have indicated his weapons factories were still operating to produce fissile materials to make nuclear weapons.

“Chairman Kim Jong Un has made it clear several times that he is firmly committed to denuclearization, and he expressed frustration over skepticism in the international community over his commitment,” Chung Eui-yong, Moon’s national security adviser and the head of the South Korean delegation to Pyongyang, told reporters in Seoul on Thursday. “He said he’s pre-emptively taken steps necessary for denuclearization and wants to see these goodwill measures being met with goodwill measures.” Chung reported Kim as saying that work to dismantle the only missile engine test site in the country “means a complete suspension of future long-range ballistic missile tests.” Kim said he’d take “more active” measures toward denuclearization if his moves are met with corresponding goodwill measures, and that he wanted to settle the matter within Trump’s first term, Chung said.

Kim told Chung he still had faith in Trump despite diplomatic setbacks, and emphasized that he has not once talked negatively about Trump to anyone, including his closest advisers. Kim also said an end-of-war declaration that Seoul and Pyongyang have been pushing Washington to sign off on wouldn’t weaken the U.S.-South Korean alliance or lead to the withdrawal of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to prevent North Korean attack, according to Chung. The summit later this month between Kim and Moon, the driving force behind the current diplomacy, will be a crucial indicator of whether larger nuclear negotiations with the United States will proceed. Moon is seen as eager to keep the diplomacy alive in part so that he can advance his ambitious engagement plans with the North, which would need U.S. backing to succeed. The inter-Korean summit comes on the eve of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York at the end of September, but Seoul said Thursday that it was unlikely Kim would attend. Seoul has indicated an interest in Kim and Trump meeting in New York, and Trump, who is facing growing domestic turmoil, has hinted that another summit could happen. While pushing ahead with summits and inter-Korean engagement, Seoul is trying to persuade Washington and Pyongyang to proceed with peace and denuclearization processes at the same time so they can overcome a growing dispute over the sequencing of the diplomacy. Seoul and Pyongyang both want a declaration to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War. U.S. officials have insisted that a peace declaration, which many see as a precursor to the North eventually calling for the removal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, cannot come before North Korea takes more concrete action toward abandoning its nuclear weapons. Such steps may include providing an account of the components of its nuclear program, allowing outside inspections and giving up a certain number of its nuclear weapons during the early stages of the negotiations. The Korean War ended with an armistice, leaving the peninsula technically still at war. Moon has made an end-of-war declaration an important premise of his peace agenda with North Korea. While an end-of-war declaration wouldn’t imply a legally binding peace treaty, experts say it could create political momentum that would make it easier for North Korea to steer the discussions toward a peace regime, diplomatic recognition, economic benefits and security concessions. The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Thursday said Washington must discard its “stubborn” stance that the North must denuclearize first before the United States agrees to a peace treaty. The article says the North has shown “goodwill and generosity” through actions such as returning U.S. war remains and dismantling a nuclear testing ground, but that the United States has failed to respond similarly. After their June summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim issued a vague statement about a nuclear-free peninsula without describing when and how it would occur. Post-summit nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang were rocky and quickly settled into a stalemate. Trump called off a planned visit to North Korea by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, citing insufficient progress in denuclearization. The two past inter-Korean summits in April and May removed war fears and initiated a global diplomatic push that culminated with the meeting between Kim and Trump in June. But Moon faces tougher challenges heading into his third meeting with Kim, with the stalemate in nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington raising fundamental questions about Kim’s supposed willingness to abandon his nuclear weapons.</s>This weekend, North Korea will let Donald Trump see with his own eyes its continuing resolve to hang on to its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. We will get a substantial military parade through Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square on Sunday, Sept. 9, the 70th founding anniversary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Even though North Korea announced a moratorium on testing its intercontinental-range ballistic missiles—those that can hit the entirety of the United States homeland—there's nothing that would stop Kim from showing them off. And Kim also has a panoply of shorter range systems to parade before the eyes of the world—and the neighbors they could be used against, including Japan.

Indeed, this year's big show may present ample proof that North Korea has built out substantially its nuclear deterrent force, which it declared complete last November.

During his New Year's Day address earlier this year, Kim said that the country's "nuclear weapons research sector and the rocket industry should mass-produce nuclear warheads." Sept. 9 might be the time to show that this directive was carried out. Indeed, U.S. intelligence agencies have detected signs of North Korea manufacturing new launchers and ICBMs.

If so, they will roll right through the house of cards President Donald Trump set up for himself after the Singapore summit with North Korea. With the recent cancellation of a trip to Pyongyang by his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, the familiar frictions that have kept the United States and North Korea from clinching a comprehensive deal have reared their head again.

The two countries disagree on fundamental and foundational issues. North Korea disagrees that it should unilaterally disarm—something it never agreed to anyway. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is working to smooth over the president's assurances to Kim in Singapore that Washington would support a declaration to end the Korean War—a proposition that leaves many of Trump's advisors deeply uncomfortable.

On June 13, one day after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore for a historic summit, Trump took to Twitter to declare that there is "no longer a nuclear threat" from North Korea.

In the weeks since, it's become apparent that isn't the case. Not only does the nuclear threat remain, but it appears to be growing. Even Pompeo, charged with implementing the flimsy agreement that came out of the Singapore encounter, couldn't evade when asked by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether Pyongyang was still continuing to produce nuclear-warhead-ready fissile material.

So, watch closely those goose-stepping ranks of North Korean soldiers and their still-burgeoning arsenal.

This will mark the second major military parade in Pyongyang this year, and it’s expected to be significantly larger than the one in February.

China will send high-level representation. There had been much speculation that President Xi Jinping would come. Earlier this year, he accepted an invitation by Kim to travel to North Korea. But on Sunday, Li Zhanshu, the chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, will travel to North Korea instead.

Regardless, Xi remains Kim's most frequently visited foreign leader, with three meetings already this year, and while North Korea and China aren't exactly the ironclad allies they're often made out to be, Kim has made an effort to loop Xi into his diplomatic designs with the United States and South Korea. During their first meeting in March, Xi invited Kim to keep up frequent high-level meetings between the two of them—presumably to give Beijing a window into the North Korean leader's thinking.

Officially, China continues to support the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Xi was wise to take his one-on-one in Pyongyang out of the public eye and under different circumstances than North Korea’s founding anniversary and a parade of nukes.

As a series of bizarre presidential tweets made clear last week, Trump is continuing to set up China as the scapegoat for the growing frictions in the diplomatic process between the United States and North Korea. Trump's theory of why talks with North Korea aren't going well is because "North Korea is under tremendous pressure from China because of our major trade disputes with the Chinese Government," per those tweets. "At the same time, we also know that China is providing North Korea with considerable aid, including money, fuel, fertilizer and various other commodities. This is not helpful," the president added.

Had Xi decided to go to Pyongyang, the president's theory of why North Korea is not playing along with his pre-midterm election needs would have hardened. But it may harden still with Li’s presence.

If talks between Washington and Pyongyang reach a deep freeze—and they appear to be headed there—Trump will blame China and possibly turn on Kim for “betraying” him, even though in point of fact North Korea never did agree to disarm. "Complete denuclearization" means anything but unilateral North Korean disarmament.

The September parade might even see Trump revert to his old nickname of choice for Kim: “Little Rocket Man.”

Beyond the fateful Sept. 9 festivities in Pyongyang, the centerpiece event this month will be the fifth inter-Korean summit meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim.

This will be the third meeting between the two Korean leaders and will deal with the implementation of the April 27 Panmunjom declaration. The United States' hesitance to support a declaration to end the Korean War—a priority for both Moon and Kim, which they hope for by the end of this year—will cast a pall over the talks, no doubt.

Moreover, while the first inter-Korean summit meeting this year allowed Moon to wow Kim with promises of economic cooperation, the United Nations sanctions regime has not gone away. Moon might find himself in Pyongyang facing down a less amused Kim Jong Un, eager for prompt sanctions relief.

So, September is shaping up as an eventful month for the Korean Peninsula.

With the fizzle in U.S.-North Korea diplomacy in August, the coming weeks will underline the upcoming trajectory for diplomatic talks—and it does not appear to be trending upwards.

The high expectations that Trump set in the lead-up to and the aftermath of the Singapore summit meeting are now colliding with reality. The North Korean nuclear program isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but the Korean Peninsula is on the cusp of change.

With trips by Moon and Li to Pyongyang this month—potentially to be followed by Xi—the United States might find itself left out on the sidelines, holding out for the unattainable objective of short-term nuclear disarmament in North Korea while one missile after another is paraded through Kim Il Sung Square.</s>SEOUL, South Korea >> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un still has faith in U.S. President Donald Trump’s commitment to ending their nations’ hostile relations, but he’s frustrated by questions about his willingness to denuclearize and wants his “goodwill measures” to be met in kind, South Korean officials said Thursday.

The trove of comments from Kim, including his commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and to the suspension of all future long-range missile tests, were relayed by top South Korean security officials returning from meeting him in Pyongyang as well as by the North’s propaganda specialists.

Even in their indirect form, each statement will be parsed for clues about Kim’s mindset as North Korea and the U.S. move forward with efforts to resolve a nuclear standoff that just a year ago many feared could lead to war. Some of his reported comments were reiterations of past stances, but there will be sharp interest in whether they push negotiators back to diplomacy after recriminations that followed Kim and Trump’s June summit.

Since then, neither side has seemed willing to make a substantive move, leading to skepticism over Trump’s claims that Kim will really dismantle his nuclear weapons program. Recent satellite photos have indicated Kim’s weapons factories were still operating to produce fissile materials to make nuclear weapons.

South Korean officials said they forwarded a message from Trump to Kim during their meeting and would send a separate message from Kim to Trump later Thursday. The officials wouldn’t discuss the content of the messages.

Chung Eui-yong, Moon’s national security adviser and the head of the South Korean delegation to Pyongyang, said Kim told him that he still had faith in Trump despite diplomatic setbacks. He said Kim emphasized that he has not once talked negatively about Trump to anyone, including his closest advisers.

Trump responded Thursday by tweeting, “Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims ‘unwavering faith in President Trump.’ Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!”

Chung reported that Kim said he wishes for North Korea and the U.S. to put an end to their seven decades of hostile relations before the end of Trump’s first term.

Kim told Chung that work to dismantle the only missile engine test site in North Korea “means a complete suspension of future long-range ballistic missile tests.” Kim said he’d take “more active” measures toward denuclearization if his moves are met with corresponding goodwill measures, Chung said.

Kim, however, expressed to Chung that he was frustrated by skepticism in the international community over his commitment to denuclearization.

“He said he’s pre-emptively taken steps necessary for denuclearization and wants to see these goodwill measures being met with goodwill measures,” Chung said.

Kim also said an end-of-war declaration that Seoul and Pyongyang have been pushing Washington to sign off on wouldn’t weaken the U.S.-South Korean alliance or lead to the withdrawal of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to prevent North Korean attack, according to Chung.

South Korea’s liberal government is keen on keeping engagement with North Korea alive. The delegation to the North announced that they had set up a summit for Sept. 18-20 in Pyongyang between the North Korean leader and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, their third meeting since April.

That summit will be a crucial indicator of whether larger nuclear negotiations with the United States will proceed. Moon is seen as eager to keep the diplomacy alive in part so that he can advance his ambitious engagement plans with the North, which would need U.S. backing to succeed.

The inter-Korean summit would come just before a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York at the end of September, but Seoul said Thursday that it was unlikely Kim would attend. Seoul has indicated an interest in Kim and Trump meeting in New York, and Trump, who is facing growing domestic turmoil, has hinted that another summit could happen.

While pushing ahead with summits and inter-Korean engagement, Seoul is trying to persuade Washington and Pyongyang to proceed with peace and denuclearization processes at the same time so they can overcome a growing dispute over the sequencing of the diplomacy.

Seoul and Pyongyang both want a declaration to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice. U.S. officials have insisted that a peace declaration, which many see as a precursor to the North eventually calling for the removal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, cannot come before North Korea takes more concrete action toward abandoning its nuclear weapons.

Such steps may include providing an account of the components of its nuclear program, allowing outside inspections and giving up a certain number of its nuclear weapons during the early stages of the negotiations.

While an end-of-war declaration wouldn’t imply a legally binding peace treaty, experts say it could create political momentum that would make it easier for North Korea to steer the discussions toward a peace regime, diplomatic recognition, economic benefits and security concessions.

The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Thursday said Washington must discard its “stubborn” stance that the North must denuclearize first before the United States agrees to a peace treaty. The article said the North has shown “goodwill and generosity” through actions such as returning U.S. war remains and dismantling a nuclear testing ground, but that the U.S. has failed to respond similarly.

After their June summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim issued a vague statement about a nuclear-free peninsula without describing when and how it would occur. Post-summit nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang were rocky and quickly settled into a stalemate.

Trump called off a planned visit to North Korea by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, citing insufficient progress in denuclearization.

Speaking Thursday in India, Pompeo said the U.S. will continue to work with North Korea to “deliver for the world” in upholding U.N. Security Council resolutions against its nuclear and missile programs, and the commitment Kim made at his June summit with Trump on denuclearization. Pompeo declined to talk about what he described as “ongoing negotiations” with the North Koreans.

“It is the case that there is still an enormous amount of work to do,” Pompeo told a news conference in New Delhi. “We haven’t had any nuclear tests, we haven’t had any missile tests, which we consider a good thing. But the work of convincing Chairman Kim to make the strategic shift that we’ve talked about for a brighter future for the people of North Korea continues.”

The State Department also announced Thursday that its new special envoy for North Korea policy, Stephen Biegun, would be traveling to South Korea, China and Japan next week, his first assignment since his appointment last week as point-man for diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang.

In a move that will irk North Korea, the U.S. Justice Department in Washington was preparing Thursday to announce charges against a North Korean in connection with the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, according to a U.S. government official familiar the criminal case.

U.S. officials believed the Sony hack was retribution for “The Interview,” a comedy film that starred Seth Rogen and James Franco and centered on a plot to assassinate Kim.

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington, DC, contributed to this report.</s>Australia and New Zealand said on Friday their governments were deploying three maritime patrol aircraft to Japan to assist with efforts to enforce United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

Australia will add two AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft to conduct maritime surveillance to an existing aircraft deployed earlier in the year, Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said.

New US envoy for North Korea to visit Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo next week

New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said his government was deploying an air force P-3K2 plane to carry out patrols of international waters in North Asia for signs of vessels undertaking activities that break UN sanctions against North Korea, including ship-to-ship transfers.

“We welcome the recent dialogue North Korea has had with the United States and South Korea. However, until such time as North Korea abides by its international obligations, full implementation of the United Nations Security Council sanctions resolutions will be essential,” Peters said.

The aircraft would be based at Kadena Air Base in Japan, he added.

The United States has been pressuring North Korea via sanctions to give up its nuclear weapons programme and in August penalised two Russian shipping companies and six vessels it said were involved in the transfer of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels in violation of UN restrictions.

The United States and North Korea are involved in talks intended to ease tensions between them, and US President Donald Trump met North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un in June.

Since then relations have cooled and a planned visit by the top US diplomat to North Korea was scrapped last week because Trump said insufficient progress towards denuclearisation had been made.

However, on Thursday South Korea officials said Kim had told them he agreed to denuclearise “by the end of Trump’s first term”.

The move by Australia was a “continuation” of the country’s “strong stand to deter and disrupt illicit trade and sanctions evasion activities by North Korea and its associated networks”, Pyne said.</s>'Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims 'unwavering faith in President Trump.' Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!' Trump writes on Twitter.

WASHINGTON, DC, USA – US President Donald Trump pledged on Thursday, September 6 (September 7, Manila time), to complete a deal on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula together with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, signaling that negotiations remain alive after weeks of an apparent deadlock.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims 'unwavering faith in President Trump.' Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

The tweet came hours after Kim renewed his own commitment to the goal of denuclearization in talks with a special envoy from Seoul, ahead of a summit planned in Pyongyang scheduled for September 18-20 with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. (READ: Mixed U.S. messages from Trump, Pompeo on North Korea)

"The north and the south should further their efforts to realize the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

South Korean national security advisor Chung Eui-yong, who met with Kim, said the North Korean leader also emphasized that his "trust in Trump remains unchanged," the comment which led to the US president's tweet.

Chung added that Kim expressed his intention to work closely with the United States to achieve denuclearization "in the first official term of President Trump," which ends in January 2021.

The enthusiastic comments came 12 days after Trump summarily canceled a trip to Pyongyang by his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, which was aimed at getting the discussions on North Korea's nuclear talks back on track three months after Trump's landmark summit with Kim in Singapore.

In a statement on August 24, Trump said he was scotching Pompeo's trip "because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

He also slammed China as not helping with the effort to convince Pyongyang to halt its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program.

"Additionally, because of our much tougher trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were," Trump said at the time.

Thursday's statements by the two leaders appeared to paper over differences the two sides have over what the current talks should focus on.

Pyongyang apparently wants to first achieve an official end to the seven-decade state of war with South Korea, while Washington wants to start immediately on the long process of denuclearization.

Stephen Biegun, newly-appointed US envoy for the North, said last month Kim had promised "final, fully verified denuclearization" at the Singapore summit.

But Pyongyang has slammed Washington for its "gangster-like" demands for complete nuclear disarmament.

Pompeo: 'still much work to do'

Trump's statement came hours before the US Justice Department unveiled criminal charges against a North Korean government-linked hacker involved in several major cybercrimes, including the hacking of Sony Pictures and the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh.

Pyongyang had no immediate comment on the charges, which it has denied responsibility for in the past, and it was not clear whether they would impact the nuclear negotiations.

The State Department announced Thursday that Biegun would travel to South Korea, China and Japan next week for talks on North Korea.

In New Delhi Thursday, Secretary of State Pompeo, the former US intelligence chief who heads the US negotiating effort, struck a sober note, saying there is still much work to do.

North Korea "is the only country that has commitments under UN Security Council resolutions," he told reporters.

"It is the case that there is still an enormous amount of work to do. We haven't had any nuclear tests, we haven't had any missile tests, which we consider a great thing."

"But the work of convincing Chairman Kim to make the strategic shift which we talked about, for a brighter future for the people of North Korea, continues," Pompeo added. – Rappler.com</s>North Korean leader Kim Jong Un still has faith in President Donald Trump’s commitment to ending their nations’ hostile relations, but he’s frustrated by questions about his willingness to denuclearize and wants his “goodwill measures” to be met in kind, South Korean officials said Thursday.

The trove of comments from Kim, including his commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and to the suspension of all future long-range missile tests, were relayed by top South Korean security officials returning from meeting him in Pyongyang as well as the North’s propaganda specialists.

Even in their indirect form, each statement will be parsed for clues about Kim’s mindset as North Korea and the U.S. move forward with efforts to resolve a nuclear standoff that just a year ago many feared could lead to war. Some of his reported comments were reiterations of past stances, but there will be sharp interest in whether they push negotiators back to diplomacy after recriminations that followed Kim and Trump’s June summit.

Since then, neither side has seemed willing to make a substantive move, leading to skepticism over Trump’s claims that Kim will really dismantle his nuclear weapons program. Recent satellite photos have indicated Kim’s weapons factories were still operating to produce fissile materials to make nuclear weapons.

South Korean officials said they forwarded a message from Trump to Kim during their meeting and would send a separate message from Kim to Trump later Thursday. The officials wouldn’t discuss the content of the messages.

Chung Eui-yong, Moon’s national security adviser and the head of the South Korean delegation to Pyongyang, said Kim told him that he still had faith in Trump despite diplomatic setbacks. He said Kim emphasized that he has not once talked negatively about Trump to anyone, including his closest advisers.

Chung reported that Kim said he wishes for North Korea and the U.S. to put an end to their seven decades of hostile relations before the end of Trump’s first term.

Kim told Chung that work to dismantle the only missile engine test site in North Korea “means a complete suspension of future long-range ballistic missile tests.” Kim said he’d take “more active” measures toward denuclearization if his moves are met with corresponding goodwill measures, Chung said.

Kim, however, expressed to Chung that he was frustrated by skepticism in the international community over his commitment to denuclearization.

“He said he’s pre-emptively taken steps necessary for denuclearization and wants to see these goodwill measures being met with goodwill measures,” Chung said.

Kim also said an end-of-war declaration that Seoul and Pyongyang have been pushing Washington to sign off on wouldn’t weaken the U.S.-South Korean alliance or lead to the withdrawal of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to prevent North Korean attack, according to Chung.

South Korea’s liberal government is keen on keeping engagement with North Korea alive. The delegation to the North announced that they had set up a summit for Sept. 18-20 in Pyongyang between the North Korean leader and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, their third meeting since April.

That summit will be a crucial indicator of whether larger nuclear negotiations with the United States will proceed. Moon is seen as eager to keep the diplomacy alive in part so that he can advance his ambitious engagement plans with the North, which would need U.S. backing to succeed.

The inter-Korean summit would come just before a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York at the end of September, but Seoul said Thursday that it was unlikely Kim would attend. Seoul has indicated an interest in Kim and Trump meeting in New York, and Trump, who is facing growing domestic turmoil, has hinted that another summit could happen.

While pushing ahead with summits and inter-Korean engagement, Seoul is trying to persuade Washington and Pyongyang to proceed with peace and denuclearization processes at the same time so they can overcome a growing dispute over the sequencing of the diplomacy.

Seoul and Pyongyang both want a declaration to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice. U.S. officials have insisted that a peace declaration, which many see as a precursor to the North eventually calling for the removal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, cannot come before North Korea takes more concrete action toward abandoning its nuclear weapons.

Such steps may include providing an account of the components of its nuclear program, allowing outside inspections and giving up a certain number of its nuclear weapons during the early stages of the negotiations.

While an end-of-war declaration wouldn’t imply a legally binding peace treaty, experts say it could create political momentum that would make it easier for North Korea to steer the discussions toward a peace regime, diplomatic recognition, economic benefits and security concessions.

The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Thursday said Washington must discard its “stubborn” stance that the North must denuclearize first before the United States agrees to a peace treaty. The article said the North has shown “goodwill and generosity” through actions such as returning U.S. war remains and dismantling a nuclear testing ground, but that the U.S. has failed to respond similarly.

After their June summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim issued a vague statement about a nuclear-free peninsula without describing when and how it would occur. Post-summit nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang were rocky and quickly settled into a stalemate.

Trump called off a planned visit to North Korea by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, citing insufficient progress in denuclearization.</s>SEOUL, South Korea -- Offering an olive branch to President Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un told a South Korean envoy that he wanted to denuclearize North Korea before Trump's current term ends in early 2021, the envoy said Thursday.

Expressing frustration over what he called Washington's failure to negotiate in good faith, Kim told the envoy, Chung Eui-yong, that he still had confidence in Trump. He said he had never spoken badly of the U.S. leader, even to his closest aides, since the two met in Singapore on June 12, according to Chung.

The president responded on Twitter early Thursday, expressing appreciation for Kim's "unwavering faith in President Trump." He added, "We will get it done together!"

Chung was sent by President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Wednesday in hopes of reviving the stalled talks between the North and the United States over how to denuclearize North Korea. Moon plans to go to Pyongyang on Sept. 18 to meet with Kim and discuss improving the Koreas' relationship, including potential economic cooperation.

At a televised news conference in Seoul, Chung said Kim had voiced frustration that his commitment to nuclear disarmament, which he expressed when he met with Moon in April and with Trump in June, was not taken seriously by much of the world. Kim said that while North Korea had already taken important steps toward denuclearization, Washington was not doing enough in return, Chung said.

"He strongly expressed his will to take more active steps for denuclearization if the actions North Korea has already taken are matched by corresponding measures" from the United States, Chung said.

"He made it clear that his trust in President Trump remains -- and will remain -- unchanged, even though there have recently been some difficulties in negotiations between the North and the United States," Chung said. "He said he wished he could eliminate 70 years of hostile history with the United States, improve North Korea-U.S. relations and realize denuclearization within the first term of President Trump."

Chung said Kim gave him messages to relay to Washington, which officials said were being sent to his U.S. counterpart, John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser. Chung did not reveal their contents, except to say that Kim wanted Washington's assurances that he had not made a mistake when he committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Kim's remarks, as relayed by the South Korean envoy, signaled that North Korea was willing to strike a denuclearization deal personally with Trump, who has been more eager to engage North Korea than any of his predecessors.

The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said Kim had reaffirmed North Korea's commitment to denuclearize during his meetings with Chung. But it fell short of saying whether Kim would take major steps toward that goal.

Kim has not offered to provide a full inventory of nuclear weapons and fissile materials, as Washington has demanded. Nor has Kim offered any detailed plan for disarmament.

He also repeated his country's long-standing demand that denuclearization must include the removal of a "nuclear threat" to North Korea, a common reference to U.S. military exercises in the region.

The most immediate reciprocal step North Korea wants from Washington is to declare an end to the Korean War, which was halted with an armistice in 1953.

But U.S. officials fear that once such a declaration is made, North Korea will demand that the United States stop conducting joint military exercises with South Korea and withdraw its tens of thousands of troops based there.

Kim dismissed such concerns, saying that the declaration would "have nothing to do with" the South Korean-U.S. alliance or any withdrawal of U.S. troops, Chung said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea president Moon Jae-in agree to hold a third summit between September 18 and September 20 in Pyongyang.