INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Pompeo's visit comes a day after Kim Jong Un made his second trip to China
(File)Pyongyang: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to return from North Korea with three American
detainees, as well as details of an upcoming summit between leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump, a South Korean official said
on Wednesday.Pompeo arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday from Japan and headed to the Koryo Hotel in the North Korean capital for meetings.The
top US diplomat and officials accompanying him were feted at a lunch by Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief and currently the North's director
of the United Front Department which is responsible for inter-Korean relations.Trump earlier broke the news of Pompeo's second visit to
North Korea in less than six weeks and said the two countries had agreed on a date and location for the summit, although he stopped short of
providing details.An official at South Korea's presidential Blue House said Pompeo was expected to finalise the date of the summit and
secure the release of the three American detainees. Tony Kim taught at a university in Pyongyang before being arrested in 2017. While
Trump said it would be a "great thing" if the American detainees were freed, Pompeo told reporters en route to Pyongyang he had not received
such a commitment but hoped North Korea would "do the right thing"."We'll talk about it again today," he said
"I think it'd be a great gesture if they would choose to do so."At lunch on Wednesday, Pompeo said the United States is committed to working
with North Korea to achieve peace on the Korean peninsula."I have high expectations the United States will play a very big role in
establishing peace on the Korean peninsula," said Kim, the former spy chief
The remarks were provided in a pool report.In response, Pompeo said the group with him was "equally committed to working with you to achieve
exactly" that."For decades, we have been adversaries
Now we are hopeful that we can work together to resolve this conflict, take away threats to the world and make your country have all the
opportunities your people so richly deserve," Pompeo added.The pending US-North Korea summit has sparked a flurry of diplomacy, with Japan,
South Korea and China holding a high-level meeting on Wednesday.Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said concerned parties should seize the
opportunity to promote denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, the official Xinhua news agency reported.Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe, who attended the meeting along with South Korean President Moon Jae-In, said his nation would normalise ties with North Korea if the
nuclear and missile issues, along with that of the abduction of Japanese citizens, were solved comprehensively."We must take the recent
momentum towards denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula and towards peace and security in Northeast Asia, and, cooperating even further
with international society, make sure this is linked to concrete action by North Korea," Abe told a news conference after the meeting.North
Korea has admitted to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens decades ago to train spies
Five have returned to Japan.TEACHERS, MISSIONARY HELDThe three US detainees still being held are Korean-American missionary Kim Dong-chul;
Kim Sang-duk, also known as Tony Kim, who spent a month teaching at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST)
before he was arrested in 2017; and Kim Hak-song, who also taught at PUST.Until now, the only American released by North Korea during
Trump's presidency has been Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old university student who returned to the United States in a coma last summer after 17
months of captivity and died days later.Warmbier's death escalated US-North Korea tensions, already running high at the time over
Pyongyang's stepped-up missile tests.Pompeo's visit comes a day after Kim Jong Un made his second trip to China in less than two months,
meeting President Xi Jinping and discussing the ongoing international talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile
programmes.During the visit, announced only after it was over, Kim told Xi he hoped relevant parties would take "phased" and "synchronised"
measures to realise denuclearisation and lasting peace on the Korean peninsula, according to Chinese state media.Separately, Trump and Xi
discussed developments on the Korean peninsula and Kim's visit to China during a phone call on Tuesday morning, the White House said. ©
Thomson Reuters 2018(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a
