Trump heralds ‘solid response to letter’ cancelling summit while US sends team to Singapore as part of diplomatic flurry

North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator and former spy chief is due to arrive in New York on Wednesday for talks aimed at salvaging a June summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.

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Kim Yong-chol, a veteran of the regime in Pyongyang who will be the most senior North Korean official to visit the US in 18 years, will hold talks with the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, following a flurry of diplomatic activity over the weekend.

The 72-year-old general, the vice-chairman of the ruling Workers’ party who has served three generations of the Kim dynasty, stopped in Beijing on Tuesday night, where he was reported to have held talks with Chinese officials before his onward flight.

Trump confirmed that the general was on his way in a tweet on Tuesday morning, after South Korean media reported that he was on a passenger list for a Wednesday flight from Beijing to New York.

The president described the impending visit as a “solid response” to his letter to the North Korean leader on Thursday cancelling their planned summit on 12 June, blaming a bellicose statement from North Korean officials.

US officials had also said that the North Koreans had failed to appear for a planning meeting and did not answer their phones for several days last week. Trump has since claimed that the summit could take place on schedule.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you!

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration had indefinitely delayed sanctions on North Korea which had been due to take effect on Tuesday, in a bid to improve the conditions for a summit.

Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman said in a statement on Tuesday: “Since the President’s 24 May letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the North Koreans have been engaging. The United States continues to actively prepare for President Trump’s expected summit with leader Kim in Singapore.”

Sanders said Trump would meet Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on 7 June at the White House in the run-up to a G7 summit in Quebec and the planned summit with Kim.

A team of US negotiators, headed by Washington’s current ambassador to the Philippines, Sung Kim, met North Korean officials in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas, on Sunday, and are due to have further meetings there over the course of this week, according to Sanders.

She said a separate team of White House officials, led by the deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, was in Singapore, “coordinating logistics for the expected summit”. According to the Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, Kim Chang-son, the de facto chief of staff to the North Korean leader, had also flown to Singapore for the talks.

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While the Singapore meetings are about logistics, the DMZ talks are about the substance of the talks, and the challenge of bridging a yawning gap between the two parties’ negotiating positions. Trump and top US officials have hitherto insisted that North Korea unilaterally and completely dismantles its nuclear weapons programme, handing over warheads, fissile material and related equipment to the US, before receiving any reciprocal benefits. Pyongyang has rejected unilateral disarmament. It sees denuclearisation as a phased and mutual process.

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The last member of the North Korean leadership to visit the US was vice-marshal Jo Myong-rok, who went to California and then Washington for a White House meeting with Bill Clinton in October 2000. The two governments came close to a summit meeting and a disarmament agreement, but the plans were derailed by the US presidential election the following month, narrowly won by George W Bush, who cut off all contacts with Pyongyang.

A state department report on religious freedom around the world published on Tuesday estimated that 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners are in detention camps in North Korea, under “horrific conditions” in remote areas.

Sam Brownback, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said: “What we know is that you’ve got a gulag system operating in North Korea, and it’s been a terrible situation for many – for many years. You can go on satellite, open-source satellite, and see some of these camps and the situation.”

Asked if human rights would come up in a Trump-Kim summit, Brownback replied: “The president is right on point on North Korea. He’s very engaged on this, as you know. The secretary [Pompeo] is very engaged on this. And I think they’re raising all of these issues.”