UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to visit Pyongyang this week for a possible meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a South Korean media report said.
The possible trip comes six months after Pyongyang at the last minute canceled an invitation for Ban to visit an inter-Korean factory park in Kaesong. Ban has said North Korea gave no reason for the cancellation. He had not planned to visit Pyongyang at that time.
Yonhap news agency cited an unidentified source in the UN in its Sunday report concerning Ban’s Pyongyang trip. It gave no details on the purpose of the trip or the day it would take place.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, and South Korea’s Unification Ministry and presidential Blue House said they had no comment.
If the trip does take place, Ban would be the first UN leader to visit North Korea since Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1993.
Yonhap, quoting another unidentified UN source, said Ban is expected to meet Kim because it is unlikely that the secretary-general would visit a UN member state without meeting the country’s leader.
That source was quoted as saying Ban’s trip could serve as a breakthrough in the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and strained ties between the two Koreas. Ban was South Korea’s minister of foreign affairs before taking up the top UN job and visited Kaesong with a government delegation in 2006.
There are concerns that the North is now preparing another missile test, after it reportedly issued a no-sail notice to shipping off its east coast until Dec. 7.
The North’s invitation might also have been prompted by diplomatic shifts in the region that have left North Korea looking more isolated than ever, with Seoul moving closer to China, and improving strained relations with Tokyo.
Additional reporting by AFP
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