Dialogue between the two Koreas intensifies in 2018

SINGAPORE, Aug 4:U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday the process of ending North Korea’s nuclear program would take time but he was optimistic that it would be done within a timeline set by the leaders of the two countries.

JAKARTA, July 31: Indonesia has invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to attend the opening ceremony of the Asian Games in Jakarta in August following a similar invitation to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, officials said. North and South Korea are likely to be a focal point of the Games, particularly amid recent doubts over Kim’s promise to work towards denuclearisation made during a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

SOUTH KOREA, June 22: North and South Korean officials met Friday for talks on resuming reunions of families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War as the rivals boost reconciliation amid a diplomatic push to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.

SINGAPORE, June 12:  President Donald Trump proclaimed Tuesday that his momentous summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un had gone “better than anybody could have expected” and announced that the leaders planned a signing ceremony shortly. He offered no details on what was being signed.

SINGAPORE, June 10: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un landed in Singapore on Sunday ahead of a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump that could end a nuclear stand-off between the old foes and transform the secretive, impoverished Asian country.

SEOUL, May 26: South Korean President Moon Jae-in met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Saturday to discuss Kim’s possible upcoming summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, the South said, the second inter-Korean summit in as many months.

SEOUL, May 20: The chairman of South Korea’s LG Group, Koo Bon-moo, instrumental in transforming the country’s fourth-largest conglomerate into a global brand, passed away on Sunday after a year-long battle with a brain disease.

SEOUL, South Korea, May 1:  The rival Koreas dismantled huge loudspeakers used to blare Cold War-style propaganda across their tense border on Tuesday, as South Korea’s president asked the United Nations to observe the North’s planned closing of its nuclear test site.

PAJU, March 29: High-level officials from North and South Korea began talks at a border village Thursday to prepare for an April summit between their leaders amid a global diplomatic push to resolve the standoff over the North’s nuclear program.

WASHINGTON, Mar 9: After months of trading insults and threats of nuclear annihilation, President Donald Trump agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un by the end of May to negotiate an end to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, South Korean and U.S. officials said Thursday. No sitting American president has ever met with a North Korea leader.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea, Feb 10: A rare invitation to Pyongyang for the South Korean president marked Day Two of the North Korean Kim dynasty’s southern road tour Saturday, part of an accelerated diplomatic warming that included more handshakes, some Korean liquor over lunch and the potential shared joy of watching a “unified” Korea team play hockey at the Olympics.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea, Feb 8:  It was a historic moment, and it happened even before the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics had officially begun.

KATHMANDU, Jan 20: The Government of Nepal has welcomed the recent measures taken toward normalizing the relations between the Republic of Korea and Democratic People's Republic of Korea, including through the participation in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

SEOUL Jan 10: South Korean President Moon Jae-in credited U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday for helping to spark the first inter-Korean talks in more than two years, and warned that Pyongyang would face stronger sanctions if provocations continued.

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Tuesday flew into South Korea, the closest he has come to the frontlines of the nuclear standoff with North Korea, saying a solution must be found to the security threat posed by Pyongyang.

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct 13; South Korea said it detected an earthquake Friday near North Korea's main nuclear test site, the fourth since the country's sixth and most powerful nuclear test explosion last month. Some experts suggested the area is now too unstable to conduct more bomb tests.

WASHINGTON, August 18: U.S. assessments of the size of North Korea's nuclear arsenal vary wildly.

SEOUL, August 1: North Korea after decades of effort has a missile potentially capable of reaching the continental United States, but analysts say Pyongyang has yet to show the ICBM can inflict serious damage once it gets there.

SEOUL, May 10:  Hours after celebrating his election win with thousands of supporters in wet Seoul streets, new South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday was quickly thrown into the job of leading a nation deeply split over its future and faced with growing threats from North Korea and an uneasy alliance with the United States.

SEOUL, March 22:  North Korea's latest missile launch ended in failure on Wednesday as the United States sent a supersonic bomber streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force against the North, officials said.

SEOUL, March 21: South Korea's just-ousted president said Tuesday she was "sorry" to the people as she underwent questioning by prosecutors over a corruption scandal that led to her removal from office.

SEOUL, South Korea, March 10: A South Korean court ruling that formally ended Park Geun-hye's presidency Friday has also stripped her of all the privileges she could have enjoyed as a former head of state, including the right to be buried alongside her late dictator father at a national cemetery.

SEOUL, Sept 9: North Korea conducted a fifth nuclear test on Friday, an underground blast it claimed was of a miniaturised warhead.

SEOUL, Sept 9: North Korea on Friday conducted its fifth nuclear test, producing its biggest-ever explosive yield, South Korean officials said, with the South's president calling the atomic detonation an act of "fanatic recklessness."

SEOUL, South Korea, Aug 12: Despite a continuing nuclear standoff and virtually no interactions between each other politically, some North and South Koreans are making an exception — among their athletes at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.