WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump has accepted an extraordinary invitation by North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un to meet this spring, a senior South Korean official announced at the White House Thursday, signaling a potential diplomatic breakthrough in long-stalled efforts to end the nuclear impasse on the Korean peninsula.
Any face-to-face meeting, if it takes place, would be historic _ the first ever between the leaders of two longtime adversaries that fought one bitter war and have repeatedly threatened to fight another.
Chung Eui-yong, South Korea's national security director, said the North Korean ruler had expressed "his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible" and that Trump had agreed to do so by May.
Chung made the announcement after briefing Trump's top national security advisers, including national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan.
Chung said he was delivering a message _ apparently a signed letter from Kim _ to the White House that the North Korean ruler had given him and Suh Hoon, chief of South Korean's National Intelligence Service, earlier this week in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Trump personally hinted at the news when he made his first appearance ever in the White House briefing room Thursday afternoon and told reporters to stay around for "a major announcement" on North Korea, one that clearly met his approval.
Ever since a five-member South Korean delegation returned Tuesday from meeting Kim in Pyongyang, the tantalizing prospect of a peaceful resolution to the rising tensions in northeast Asia appeared possible, although far from certain.
The South Koreans said that Kim had offered to freeze further nuclear or ballistic missile tests while talks proceed, and to "denuclearize" if he was convinced his country faced no military threat and his dynastic regime was secure.
In a sign of the fast-moving diplomacy, Kim will meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month in the third-ever meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea since their war ended in an uneasy cease-fire in 1953.
Earlier this week, Trump voiced cautious optimism about talks with North Korea, saying he hoped the North Koreans were "sincere" in their offer to engage in talks. But he said he's prepared "to go whichever path is necessary."
Trump and Kim have traded insults and invective over the past year _ "Little Rocket Man" vs. "a mentally deranged U.S. dotard" _ but Trump also said he would be "honored" to meet with Kim under the right circumstances.
Other members of the administration urged caution, saying multiple diplomatic attempts to curb North Korean's nuclear program since the early 1990s all have failed, and that Kim's government may be seeking to get out of onerous sanctions or buy time to make a more advanced warhead.
"We're a long ways from negotiations," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Ethiopia, where he was on a five-nation tour of Africa.
Saying the Trump administration had to be "very clear-eyed," he said the first step would be "to have some kind of talks about talks" to set the parameters of any negotiations.
"I don't know yet, until we are able to meet ourselves face-to-face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations," Tillerson added.
Tillerson has long promoted diplomacy with North Korea to avoid a potential military conflict with the nuclear-armed nation.
The apparent thaw began on Jan. 1 when Kim offered to send a North Korean delegation to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February.
Vice President Mike Pence, who headed the U.S. delegation to the Olympics, had planned a secret meeting in South Korea with Kim's younger sister. But the North Koreans canceled the meeting after Pence said the U.S. was about to impose stiff new sanctions.
