With less than a month to go until the first-ever summit between North Korea and the United States,... there have been numerous diplomatic activities on and around the Korean Peninsula.
To get an overview on recent developments and take a look into North Korea's announcement over the weekend, we have our unification ministry correspondent Oh Jung-hee joining us in the studio.
Good to have you with us, Jung-hee.

Thanks for having me, Ji-yoon.

Before we get to the latest announcement from Pyongyang, I want to begin with the overall situation and relations between North Korea and the U.S. in the run up to the summit.
Things had seemed quite cranky between Pyongyang and Washington a couple of weeks ago, with Washington pressing Pyongyang on permanent denuclearization.
But last week, Pyongyang's state media reported Kim Jong-un and Pompeo reached a (quote)"satisfactory consensus" at their meeting.
What could this be?

Ji-yoon, there's actually more to that.
Take a listen to this report from Pyongyang's state media.

"After hearing President Trump's verbal message, Kim Jong-un highly evaluated and appreciated President Trump's willingness to solve the issue through dialogue and with a new alternative option."

Here we can learn that Washington has offered Pyongyang (quote)"a new alternative option"... and the two sides were both satisfied with it.
So what is this "new alternative option"?
One possibility is that the U.S. could have shown flexibility to North Korea... that, if they both set a clear-cut deadline of achieving complete denuclearization,... then the process of denuclearization could be broken into multiple stages just as the North wants.
The speculation is quite plausible because this is a part where Pyongyang and Washington clashed the most.
The North has wanted a gradual denuclearization process, going through multiple stages with rewards in between... whereas the U.S. has been wary of giving away rewards for little in return... and was firm on sealing the deal at once.

Another possibility is that the U.S. could have decided to drop the goal of 'Permanent Denuclearization', or PVID, for now and has notified Pyongyang of this.