SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea will seek high-level talks with North Korea this month as preparations for a summit began on Friday, the presidential chief of staff said, while officials in the South expressed interest in a separate summit with the United States. </s> SEOUL: Top US, South Korean and Japanese officials have discussed how to achieve a complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula ahead of upcoming inter-Korean and US-North Korean summit talks. Seoul has said previously that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to hold summit talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April. Seoul says Kim proposed meeting with President Donald Trump , and Trump agreed to him by the end of May.The developments have raised hopes for a potential breakthrough in the North Korean nuclear crisis.US National Security Adviser HR McMaster met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in San Francisco for talks over the weekend on denuclearization and the summit talks.South Korea's presidential office says the three agreed to maintain close trilateral cooperation. </s> U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States has begun direct high level talks with North Korea. The statement comes weeks before a proposed summit between Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, visiting Trump for bilateral talks, expressed a desire for Japan's interests to also be on the table during the talks. VOA's Jesusemen Oni has more. </s> The Japanese government plans to explore the possibility of a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as it considers adopting a new way of dealing with the North, government sources said Tuesday.

The decision came after Abe and other officials were briefed by Suh Hoon, one of the South Korean envoys who spoke with Kim in breakthrough talks in Pyongyang last week.

While the Abe administration has long advocated a cautious stance in holding dialogue with North Korea, it now anticipates there is a fresh chance to make progress toward resolving the issue of North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, the sources said.

"If we're to resolve the abduction issue, direct dialogue with the top -- Mr Kim Jong Un -- is essential," a source at Abe's office said.

A high-ranking government official also expressed expectations for a Tokyo-Pyongyang summit. "The issues of (North Korea's) nuclear and missile will be discussed at a summit between the United States and North Korea. Japan and North Korea can discuss (at a summit) the abduction issue and the normalization of bilateral ties," the official told reporters.

The last time Japanese and North Korean leaders met was in 2004, when then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met Kim's father Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang.

South Korean President Moon Jae In and U.S. President Donald Trump have already decided to hold summit meetings with Kim in the coming months as a result of the Pyongyang talks.

Abe plans to visit the United States early next month and meet Trump to coordinate their North Korea policies ahead of what will be the first-ever meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

"In the event that we do hold (a summit with North Korea), we will need to watch the actions of both the United States and South Korea, and look for an effective time," a government source said.

"Everything starts from here on," a senior Foreign Ministry official told reporters.

The Foreign Ministry already has its eyes on the resumption of dialogue with North Korea, having decided on a plan to spread the message that Japan is aiming to normalize ties with the North, not just demand an end to its nuclear and missile development and a resolution to the abduction issue.

Asked whether the government will aim for a summit with North Korea, its top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference on Tuesday that Japan will "consider our forthcoming actions from the perspective of what is most effective."

The Abe administration has described North Korea as having taken advantage of previous frameworks for dialogue in order to buy time to further develop its weapons.

But the South Korean president's office said in a statement Tuesday that Abe told Suh, director of the country's National Intelligence Service, he does not think North Korea will merely use the upcoming summits for that purpose.

Japan officially lists 17 of its citizens as having been abducted by North Korean agents and suspects North Korea's involvement in other disappearances of Japanese nationals.

Of the 17, five were repatriated in 2002 after Koizumi's first talks with Kim in North Korea. Pyongyang claims eight of the abductees have died and the other four never entered the country. </s> The United States and North Korea plan to hold high-level talks in Washington as soon as this week to discuss a second summit of their leaders, following a prolonged stalemate in nuclear talks, South Korean media said on Tuesday.

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▶ View Transcript </s> SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Top U.S., South Korean and Japanese officials discussed how to achieve complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula during weekend talks ahead of upcoming inter-Korean and U.S.-North Korean summits, Seoul said Monday.

Seoul officials who visited Pyongyang recently say North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to hold summit talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April. Seoul says Kim proposed meeting with President Donald Trump, and Trump agreed to him by the end of May.

The developments have raised hopes for a potential breakthrough in the North Korean nuclear crisis. But many experts say animosities would flare again if the summit meetings fail to produce any progress and leave the nuclear issue with few diplomatic options. North Korea has yet to confirm North Korea-U.S. summit talks.

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts Chung Eui-yong and Shotaro Yachi in San Francisco for talks over the weekend on denuclearization and the summit talks, South Korea’s presidential office said in a statement.

They agreed to maintain close trilateral cooperation in the next several weeks and shared a view that it’s important not to repeat past mistakes, the statement said. It didn’t elaborate but likely refers to criticism that North Korea previously used disarmament negotiations as a way to ease outside pressure and win aid while all along secretly pressing its weapons development.

Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” aired Sunday, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said Kim has “given his word” he’s committed to denuclearization. “He’s given his word. But the significance of his word is – is quite – quite weighty in the sense that this is the first time that the words came directly from the North Korean supreme leader himself, and that has never been done before,” she said.

Kim’s willingness to negotiate over his nuclear program is a step forward, but many experts remain skeptical about how sincere he is about giving up his nuclear program.

Chung, who headed a high-level delegation to Pyongyang and met Kim during his March 5-6 trip, says North Korea told his delegation it won’t need to keep its nuclear weapons if military threats against it are removed and it receives a credible security guarantee. The North has previously said it needs its nuclear program unless the United States pulls out its troops from South Korea and Japan and stops regular military drills with South Korea that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

A senior North Korean diplomat, meanwhile, flew to Finland on Sunday for a forum with former U.S. officials as well as American and South Korean civilian academics. The meeting, set for Tuesday and Wednesday, is a possible place to examine the North’s sincerity about its denuclearization pledges. North Korean officials and former U.S. officials and experts have often held such talks called “Track-2.” </s> Japan's top government spokesman left the door open on Wednesday to a possible summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss the matter of Japanese citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang's agents decades ago.

TOKYO: Japan's top government spokesman left the door open on Wednesday to a possible summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss the matter of Japanese citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang's agents decades ago.

Abe, who has made the abductees issue a keystone of his political career, will meet U.S. President Donald Trump next month in Washington ahead of a proposed summit between the U.S. leader and Pyongyang's Kim, which would follow a planned April meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Worries have surfaced in Tokyo that Japan's interests, including the abductees' fate, may be sidelined by recent moves to resolve the crisis over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.

"It is important to harmonise policies closely among Japan, the United States and South Korea ahead of the North-South summit and the U.S-North Korea summit," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference.

"After that, while liaising closing among the three countries, we will address how to comprehensively resolve the nuclear, missile and abduction issues. Amid that, we want to consider what would be most effective and address the issues from that perspective," Suga added.

On Tuesday, a government source said the administration was considering seeking an Abe-Kim meeting. He declined to be identified because he's not authorised to speak to media.

Abe, 63, has said he would not rest until all 13 of the people North Korea admitted to kidnapping have returned and divulges information about the others that Japan suspects were taken to train as North Korean spies.

But progress has largely stalled since 2002, when five of the 13 returned home. Pyongyang said the other eight were dead.

A ruling coalition lawmaker said that it was too early to plan for two-way talks with Pyongyang on the kidnappings.

"The order is a North-South summit, followed by a U.S.-North Korea summit. We have to see how they go first,” said the lawmaker, who is well-versed in diplomatic affairs.

Speculation about a Abe-Kim summit emerges periodically, especially when his ratings are soggy.

Then-premier Junichiro Koizumi, got a popularity boost after his 2002 visit to Pyongyang and in 2004 when he brought back five children of abductees.

Abe is facing perhaps the worst crisis since taking office as doubts swirl over a suspected cronyism scandal centred on the discounted sale of state-owned land to a school with ties to his wife. He has denied wrongdoing either by himself or his spouse. </s> Top US, South Korean and Japanese officials have discussed how to achieve the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula during weekend talks ahead of upcoming inter-Korean and US-North Korean summits, Seoul said.

Top US, South Korean and Japanese officials have discussed how to achieve the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula during weekend talks ahead of upcoming inter-Korean and US-North Korean summits, Seoul said.

Mr Trump then agreed to meet Mr Kim by the end of May, but North Korea has yet to confirm talks with the US. The developments have raised hopes for a potential breakthrough in the North Korean nuclear crisis. However, many experts say tensions would flare again if the summits fail to make any progress and leave the nuclear issue with few diplomatic options.

US national security adviser HR McMaster met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Chung Eui-yong and Shotaro Yachi, in San Francisco for talks over the weekend on denuclearisation and the summits, South Korea’s presidential office said. They agreed to maintain close trilateral co-operation in the next several weeks and shared a view that it is important not to repeat past mistakes, the statement said. This likely refers to criticism that North Korea previously used disarmament negotiations as a way to ease outside pressure and secure aid while all along secretly pressing its weapons development.

Appearing on CBS’s Face The Nation, South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha said Mr Kim had “given his word” that he was committed to denuclearisation. She said: “He’s given his word. But the significance of his word is … quite weighty in the sense that this is the first time that the words came directly from the North Korean supreme leader himself, and that has never been done before.”

Mr Kim’s willingness to negotiate over his nuclear programme is a step forward, but many experts remain sceptical about how sincere he is about giving up a nuclear capability that his country has built for decades, despite toughening international sanctions. Mr Chung, who headed a high-level delegation to Pyongyang and met Mr Kim during his March 5-6 trip, said North Korea told his delegation it will not need to keep its nuclear weapons if military threats against it are removed and it receives a credible security guarantee.

The North has long maintained such a stance, saying it will not abandon its nuclear weapons unless the United States pulls out its troops from South Korea and Japan and stops regular military drills with South Korea that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

A senior North Korean diplomat, meanwhile, flew to Finland on Sunday for talks with former US officials as well as American and South Korean civilian academics. The meeting, set for Tuesday and Wednesday, is a possible opportunity to examine the North’s sincerity about its denuclearisation pledges. </s> North and South Korea will hold a summit at their heavily armed border next month, Seoul’s envoy said Tuesday after meeting with Kim Jong Un on a trip to Pyongyang.

“The South and the North agreed to hold the third summit at... Panmunjom in late April,” said Chung Eui-yong, the national security adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-In, referring to the truce village at the heavily-fortified border.

If realised, the summit will be the third meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas, which technically remain at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

The previous two summits were held in 2000 and 2007, respectively, under South Korean presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun who both advocated dialogue with Pyongyang.

They both met with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.

The two Koreas also agreed to open communication hotline between Moon and Kim to “defuse military tension and to have close coordination,” Chung said Tuesday.

The two leaders will have their first phone conversation before the planned summit, he added.

North Korea also pledged that it would freeze its nuclear and missile testing programme during the period of dialogue.
South Korea states that they want high-level talks with North Korea before the summit.