ROK president forms committee to prepare for summit with DPRK

SEOUL -- Moon Jae-in, president of the Republic of Korea (ROK) formed a committee to prepare for the upcoming summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Blue House said Thursday.

Presidential spokesman Kim Eui-keyom told a press briefing Thursday that Moon appointed Im Jong-seok, presidential chief of staff, to lead the preparation committee.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, the country's top policymaker in charge of inter-Korean affairs, was named as vice head of the presidential committee.

Other members of the committee were Chung Eui-yong, top security advisor for Moon; Jang Ha-sung, presidential policy chief; Suh Hoon, director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the country's spy agency; Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha; Defense Minister Song Young-moo; and Hong Nam-ki, the minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination.

The committee was composed of three sub-committees in charge of setting an agenda, promotion, and situations management, which will be headed by Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung, Presidential Press Secretary Yoon Young-chan, and Kim Sang-gyun, second deputy director of the NIS, respectively.

The committee's first meeting will be held Friday afternoon, Moon's spokesman said. Working-level discussions will be made three or four times a week, with the committee's chief and vice chief in attendance along with the three heads of the sub-committees.

Moon and Kim have agreed to hold their first meeting in late April at Peace House, a building in the truce village of Panmunjom that straddles the two Koreas.

If held as scheduled, Kim will become the first DPRK leader to set foot on the ROK territory since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in armistice, not peace treaty. The Korean Peninsula remains technically in a state of war.