Kim Jong-un has 'fixed will' to meet Trump after surprise summit with President Moon Jae-in

South Korea said President Moon Jae-in met with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un on Saturday inside the Demilitarised Zone dividing the two nations, a day after US President Donald Trump said his summit with Pyongyang could still go ahead.

The Blue House, South Korea's presidential office, said the two leaders held unexpected talks for two hours in the truce village of Panmunjom, where they had met last month and made a declaration vowing to improve ties.

"They exchanged views and discussed ways to implement the Panmunjom Declaration and to ensure a successful US North Korea summit," the Blue House said in a statement, adding Moon would make a personal statement on Sunday morning.

Kim, in a telling line from a dispatch issued by the North’s state-run news service on Sunday, "expressed his fixed will on the historic (North Korea)-US summit talks."

The two Korean leaders agreed to "positively cooperate with each other as ever to improve (North Korea)-US relations and establish (a) mechanism for permanent and durable peace."

They agreed to have their top officials meet again on  June 1 and to set up separate talks between their top generals.

The agency said the two leaders had reached a "satisfactory consensus" and expressed "their stand to make joint efforts for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."

On Thursday Trump cancelled his upcoming meeting with Kim which had been due to take place in Singapore on June 12 - only to reverse course a day later and say it could still go ahead after productive talks were held with the North Korean officials.

The original decision to abandon the historic summit blindsided South Korea which had brokered a remarkable detente between Washington and Pyongyang after months of Kim and Trump trading insults and threats of war.

Pictures released by the Blue House showed Moon shaking hands with both Kim and his sister Kim Yo-jong, who has played a major public role in recent talks with the South, including leading a delegation across the border during February's Winter Olympics.

The meeting between Moon and Kim took place in a grand building on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, a surreal and heavily fortified village that lies between the two countries and marks the spot where the armistice ending the Korean War in 1953 was signed.