A high-level delegation of South Korean officials will travel to North Korea on Monday to discuss improving relations on the peninsula and possible talks between Washington and Pyongyang, South Korea's presidential Blue House says.
South Korea's presidential Blue House said in a statement that National Security Office (NSO) head Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service (NIS) chief Suh Hoon, a veteran of past negotiations with the North, will be among the 10-member South Korean delegation visiting Pyongyang.
During a joke-filled monologue at a dinner with journalists in Washington on Saturday, US President Donald Trump suggested that the United States will be meeting with North Korea but has told Pyongyang it must first "denuke."
"We will be meeting and we'll see if anything positive happens," he added.
It was unclear if Trump was joking or if formal US-North Korea talks were imminent.
Speaking on Sunday in Beijing ahead of the opening of China's parliament, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui said China hoped the United States and North Korea could begin dialogue too.
"War and chaos on the peninsula in not in the interests of any side," Zhang said.
Next month South Korea and the United States will begin a joint military exercise postponed until after the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, a South Korean presidential security adviser said according to Yonhap.
North Korea reiterated on Saturday that it was willing to talk to the United States but said it would never sit with any precondition.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman was quoted by KCNA as saying "we will neither beg for dialogue nor evade the military option claimed by the US".
The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang last month gave a boost to recent engagement between the two Koreas after more than a year of sharply rising tensions over the North's missile program and its sixth and largest nuclear test in defiance of United Nations sanctions.
