The South Korean presidential office said on Sunday that North Korea had offered to close down its nuclear test site in Punggye-ri next month, Yonhap reported. Scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China claimed last week that the mountain above the test site had collapsed and needed to be monitored for leaking radiation. Last week, Kim announced that he was suspending all missile tests.
Seoul also said that Pyongyang would close the site in May, and may invite foreign experts to monitor the process, AFP reported.
“Some say that we are terminating facilities that are not functioning, but you will see that they are in good condition,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan quoted Kim as saying. The two countries decided to end the Korean War, 65 years after hostilities ceased, during a historic summit on Friday.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met Kim over the Easter weekend, told ABC News that the North Korean leader was “prepared to...lay out a map that would help us achieve” denuclearisation. He described the meeting as a “good conversation”, and added that Kim was “very well prepared”.
Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump on Saturday said that he might meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the next three to four weeks, The Guardian reported.
“I think we will have a meeting over the next three or four weeks,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Michigan. “It is going be a very important meeting, the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. But we will see how it goes. I may go in, it may not work out, I leave.”
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