Kim Jong-un ready to discuss denuclearisation with US: Trump admin

North Korean officials have told their US counterparts that Kim Jong Un is ready to discuss denuclearisation, an assurance that could pave the way for a meeting with President Donald Trump, reports said on Sunday.

It is the first time the offer was made directly to Washington, after it was previously conveyed through South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong.

"The US has confirmed that Kim Jong Un is willing to discuss the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula," a Trump administration official told The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post on Sunday.

Washington stunned observers when it announced last month it had agreed to a historic first meeting between Trump and Kim to be held by the end of May.

But Pyongyang has not followed up with Washington since, which the Journal suggested may indicate that Seoul overstated the North's willingness to negotiate over its own nuclear arsenal.

No specifics have yet emerged concerning the date or venue of the proposed summit.

In a show of power, Japan, US begin joint naval drills off Korean Peninsula

Japan and the US on Thursday began joint naval drills south of the Korean Peninsula in a show of power against North Korea.

The US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three destroyers and around 14,000 troops to participate in the drills that will be conducted until November 26 in waters near the Okinawa archipelago, the US Navy said in a statement cited by Efe news.

South Korea and the US on Sunday had launched other joint drills covering larger ground in the Sea of Japan (called East Sea in the two Koreas), also as "a show of might" to Pyongyang.

After a meeting with the Commander of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had stressed on the need to reinforce the capacity of deterrence and joint response by Tokyo and Washington owing to a worsening security situation in the region.

The meeting between Abe and Harris in Tokyo comes a week after the US President Donald Trump's visit to Japan, as part of his Asia tour, during which he had urged Abe to jointly apply maximum possible pressure on Pyongyang to force it to abandon its weapons programmes.

From Japan, Trump had travelled to Seoul, where he had harshly condemned the North Korean regime in a speech at the South Korean National Assembly and underlined the strategic positioning of military assets in the region.
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