Kim Jong Un is meeting with South Korean officials for the first time

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 4 March 2018

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has selected two high-ranking officials to lead a delegation of 10 envoys to visit North Korea this week, arriving Monday.

Chung Eui-yong, head of Seoul's National Security Council, and Suh Hoon, South Korea's top intelligence official, will stay in Pyongyang for two days and are expected to speak with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. They will be the first South Korean officials to meet Kim since he took power following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, six years ago.

After the trip, the envoys will head to Washington to debrief U.S. allies on the encounter. The White House said after a phone call between Moon and President Trump on Thursday there is "no daylight" between Washington and Seoul on North Korea policy. Both the U.S. and South Korea pledged "any dialogue with North Korea must be conducted with the explicit and unwavering goal of complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.