Trump "receptive" to correspondence with N. Korean leader: White House

The White House says U.S. President Donald Trump is "receptive" to correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and wants to see the same kind of progress made during the leaders' first summit in 2018.

However, according to reports, North Korean diplomats in New York have refused to accept a letter from the U.S. leader.

Lee Seung-jae starts us off.

U.S. President Donald Trump may be seeking to resume talks with North Korea.

According to the White House press secretary, Trump is "receptive" to correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a push to revive U.S.-North Korea talks.

"The president remains receptive to correspondence with Kim Jong un, and he'd like to see the progress that was made at that summit in Singapore, which I know you covered in 2018 during his first term. As for specific correspondence, I'll leave that to the president to answer."

The comments come as NK News reported that North Korean diplomats in New York have refused to accept a letter from Trump, in a bid to restart communication channels between Washington and Pyongyang.

Citing an informed high-level source, the report said that the U.S. leader had drafted the letter to North Korean leader Kim, with a goal of restarting dialogue.

However, the source said that despite multiple attempts to deliver the letter in person, the diplomats at the UN headquarters refused to accept it.

Still, the reports indicate that Washington is looking to resume top-down diplomacy with the regime's leader.

The two had three in-person meetings during Trump's first term in office, the first being in Singapore in 2018, the second in Hanoi in February 2019, and the third taking place at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom in June of the same year.

While the first summit in Singapore resulted in the two leaders agreeing on joint efforts to pursue the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the second meeting in Vietnam failed to produce a deal.

Lee Seung-jae, Arirang News.