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February 13, 2019

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Vietnam FM in Pyongyang as DPRK-US summit nears

VIETNAM’S foreign minister arrived in Pyongyang yesterday, the official Korean Central News Agency reported, ahead of a second scheduled summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

With the meeting now two weeks away, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the meeting in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.

“A delegation of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry led by Pham Binh Minh, deputy prime minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, arrived here on Tuesday,” the KCNA said, without expanding.

Trump announced last week that Hanoi will be the host for a second summit with the DPRK leader on February 27 and 28, following their landmark first meeting in Singapore last year. That summit produced a statement in which Kim pledged to work toward denuclearization — with no hard timelines agreed.

Minh said on Monday that he “will pay an official visit to the DPRK from February 12 to 14” at the invitation of his DPRK counterpart Ri Yong Ho.

Seoul in joint game bid

South Korea has picked its capital Seoul for its bid for the 2032 summer Olympics, which it aims to jointly host with the DPRK.

The Koreas will officially inform the International Olympic Committee of their decision to bid at an event in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday.

The DPRK is expected to announce its candidate city later this week — the likely choice is its capital Pyongyang — before or during the IOC meeting.

The decision to pursue a joint bid — as well as to jointly participate in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games — was made following a series of inter-Korean talks last year, as cross-border reconciliation gathered pace.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said he would ensure the bid serves as an opportunity to “change the fate of the Korean Peninsula.”

However, the joint bid poses some difficulties. The DPRK is subject to economic sanctions, and these are unlikely to be lifted by the UN Security Council unless Pyongyang takes firmer steps toward denuclearization.




 

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