UN chief to visit DPRK this week: Yonhap
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s capital Pyongyang this week, the Republic of Korea (RoK)'s Yonhap news agency reported on November 16, in what could be a rare diplomatic opening by the isolated state.
Ban, who is from the RoK, had earlier this year made plans to visit the DPRK, but Pyongyang retracted the approval for the trip at the last minute without explanation.
"It is impossible that the UN Secretary-General will not meet the leader of the DPRK, a UN member state, as he visits the country," the source told Yonhap, adding that the trip would likely provide significant momentum to resolve issues on the Korean Peninsula.
The DPRK is under heavy UN, EU and US sanctions for its missile and nuclear tests.
The RoK's foreign ministry could not immediately confirm the report. Yonhap did not have further details about the trip.
The UN spokesman's office had no immediate comment. In December last year, the UN General Assembly urged the Security Council to consider referring the DPRK to the International Criminal Court after a UN inquiry detailed wide-ranging abuses in the country comparable to Nazi-era atrocities.
Two serving UN chiefs have visited the DPRK previously. Kurt Waldheim visited the DPRK capital of Pyongyang in 1979 and again in 1981.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali visited in 1993.
Ban served as the RoK's foreign minister from 2004 to 2006, a period of intense multinational negotiations aimed at ending the DPRK's nuclear program.
Those talks led to a 2005 deal that later fell apart.