After months of stalled negotiations,... North Korea and the U.S. will finally sit down for high-level talks this week.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's top aide, Kim Yong-chol,.... and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are meeting in New York.
Oh Jung-hee starts us off.
Some five months after the Singapore summit,... North Korea and the United States are finally due to hold high-level talks.
The U.S. State Department says... Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kim Yong-chol, the head of Pyeongyang's United Front Department, the intelligence agency, will meet in New York on Thursday to discuss denuclearization and the implementation of the June 12th summit declaration.
It's expected... the steps North Korea promised to take to denuclearize... and U.S. actions in return will top the agenda.
Meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un promised to invite international experts to oversee the permanent dismantlement of its Tongchang-ri missile engine test site.
Kim Jong-un also expressed a willingness to also scrap the Yongbyon nuclear test site for good -- if Washington takes corresponding measures.
The tug-of-war continued for the past couple of months on what those 'corresponding measures' should be... and whether U.S. should actually take those actions.
Pyeongyang first called for an end to the Korean War... and has now shifted its focus to lifting sanctions,... but the U.S. is firm that sanctions will remain in place until North Korea denuclearizes.
And Pompeo has recently reconfirmed that denuclearization ends when the U.S. verifies it.
With the high-level talks now set in stone, it's also expected that these talks could involve figures who were to lead the working-level talks as well.
The State Department announced that Stephen Biegun, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea, is taking part.
And according to Tokyo-based Kyodo News Agency, the U.S. has asked Choe Son-hui, the North's Vice Foreign Minister, to be present as well.
They were supposed to meet much earlier, upon a U.S. suggestion in September,... but that fell flat as North Korea did not respond.
Oh Jung-hee, Arirang News.