North and South Korea agree to hold third summit between leaders in Pyongyang in September

The leaders of the rival Koreas have agreed to meet for a third summit before the end of September.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in, will meet in the North’s capital Pyongyang.

The agreement between the two countries’ unification ministers comes amid an ongoing nuclear stand-off between Washington and Pyongyang.

Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un first met in April in a highly publicised summit and then again in May for more informal talks.

The Koreas said in a statement that they had reviewed ways to set up agreements made at the past summits, during nearly two hours of talks at a North Korea-controlled building in the border village of Panmunjom on Monday.

The meeting between delegations of senior officials from Seoul and Pyongyang comes as experts see slow progress on efforts to disarm North Korea since a June summit between Kim and Donald Trump.

Ri Son Gwon, the head of the North Korean delegation, told pool reporters at the end of the talks that officials agreed on a specific date for the summit in Pyongyang sometime within September, but he refused to share the date, saying he wanted to ‘keep reporters wondering’.

The South Korean unification minister, Cho Myoung-gyon, told reporters after the meeting that officials still had some work to do before agreeing on when exactly the summit would happen.

MOST POPULAR ON YAHOO NEWS UK

Homelessness charities say Government’s plan to end rough sleeping within 10 years isn’t ‘total fix’
‘Strictly Come Dancing’ 2018 line-up: Katie Piper confirmed
More than half of people think Boris Johnson shouldn’t be disciplined over burka comments
A shooting star performance: Perseid meteor shower lights up the sky with spectacular displays
Heathrow Airport passport queues reach two and a half hours in July, figures reveal

He said the two sides will again discuss when the leaders would meet but did not say when.

It was not clear why Mr Ri and Mr Cho differed on the issue of the date, and Mr Cho would not answer a specific question about the discrepancy.

Mr Cho, the chief of the South Korean delegation, said the two sides also ‘talked a lot’ about international sanctions meant to punish the North for its development of nuclear weapons, but he did not elaborate.

Seoul has been preparing for possible economic collaboration with Pyongyang that could go ahead when sanctions are lifted.

Pyongyang has urged Washington to ease the economic punishments, but the United States says that cannot happen until the North completely denuclearises.

The South Korean envoy said he urged Pyongyang to accelerate its current nuclear negotiations with the United States.

The North said it was making efforts to disarm, but Mr Cho said there were no new details on those efforts.

Experts say there has been slow progress on those efforts since the Singapore summit.