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South Korea's Moon Will Visit Trump At White House In April

South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit President Trump in Washington on April 11, after U.S. denuclearization talks with North Korea fizzled; the two sides are now at a stalemate.

Moon and First Lady Kim Jung-sook will visit the Trumps at the White House, where the two leaders will discuss "the latest developments regarding the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as well as bilateral matters," the White House says.

News of the meeting comes a month after Trump failed to break any new ground with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when the two held their second summit meeting in Hanoi.

Those talks in Vietnam unraveled over disagreements about whether the U.S. should lift economic sanctions before North Korea dismantles key elements of its nuclear arms infrastructure.

"Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times," Trump said at the end of the session.

From Seoul, NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports that the South Korean government is predicting the Washington talks will focus on completely removing the nuclear threat to peace on the Korean Peninsula.

"President Moon Jae-in wants to bring Pyongyang and Washington back to the negotiating table, but North Korea has questioned Moon's role as a mediator," Kuhn reports. "They also say that leader Kim Jong Un was disappointed by the results of the Hanoi summit, and is considering scrapping a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and missile testing."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.
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