SEOUL, Sept 1 (Reuters) – North Korea and the United States are showing signs of resuming dialogue, a South Korean lawmaker said on Tuesday after being briefed by Seoul’s intelligence agency.
There had, however, been no confirmation of specific contacts between Pyongyang and Washington, he told a televised briefing.
“Regarding a North Korea-U.S. summit, there was an assessment that talks could be possible at anytime,” lawmaker Youn Kun-young told reporters.
U.S. President Donald Trump said last month he planned to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this year after he ordered a major scaling back of annual military exercises between the United States and South Korea.The two met three times in 2018 and 2019.
Youn also told reporters that Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) believed that North Korea was continuing to take steps to position Kim Jong Un’s daughter, known as Ju Ae, as his successor.
“The reason why she is showing up in the state media frequently is she is seen as being in the process of being appointed as successor,” the lawmaker said.
The NIS assessed there was a “very low possibility” currently that Pyongyang would deploy additional troops to Ukraine, he said.
North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, has denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s claim that Pyongyang planned to send up to 50,000 more troops to Russia to fight for its ally.
The NIS had also obtained a blueprint of a North Korean missile as well as an internal document on Pyongyang’s ruling party, Yoo Yeong-ha, another lawmaker briefed by the NIS, told reporters without elaborating.
(Reporting by Heejin Kim and Joyce Lee Editing by Ed Davies)
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