US President Donald Trump is to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a second summit by the end of February, the White House has said.
The announcement came after Trump met Kim Yong Chol, one of the North Korean leader's top aides at the White House on Friday, the BBC reported.
He had been expected to deliver a letter from Kim Jong-un to Trump.
Little progress has been made on denuclearization since their historic summit in Singapore last June. As of now, the venue has not been announced for the new summit, but the speculation is mounting that it could be held in Vietnam.
Kim Yong Chol's visit to Washington is the first sign of movement in nuclear diplomacy with North Korea for months.
It is not clear what the reported letter from Kim Jong-un contained. But it was expected to lay the groundwork for another summit, our correspondent adds. Trump said he was looking forward to the talks.
Trump's press secretary Sarah Sanders said after the White House meeting that progress on denuclearization talks continued, but added: "The US is going to continue to keep pressure and sanctions on North Korea."
"I don't think we have any concrete agreement," said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who's now at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington.
"Obviously Kim doesn't want to meet with the bureaucrats who would make him agree to something, and I think Trump would welcome the distraction right now", she added.
Not very much was agreed on in the Singapore summit conducted in June 2018, so there is little to measure success by.
Nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled, no detailed account of North Korea's nuclear facilities has been provided and sanctions are still firmly in place.
Kim however, has been busy boosting his global image. He's improved relations with neighbouring South Korea, and both countries have destroyed guard posts along the heavily guarded demilitarised zone - and paid trips to each other's countries.
Ties between North Korea and China also appear to have improved, with Kim making multiple trips to Beijing to meet President Xi.
The summit was historic for the fact that it happened at all -- but on paper, all it really achieved was a vaguely-phrased agreement in which both countries agreed to work towards denuclearization.
It was never really made clear what denuclearisation would entail, the agreement did not include any timeline, details or mechanisms to verify this process.
If there is a second summit, many will be expecting something more concrete to come out of it. Both North Korea and the US are unlikely to get away with calling another vague agreement a success.
North Korea hasn't conducted a missile test since the summit. It's also dismantled a nuclear testing site and a key missile engine facility.
However, it did test out a new "high-tech" tactical weapon last November, its first official report of a weapons test in a year. This however, was not taken to represent a huge threat.
But it's still not clear how many nuclear facilities still exist in North Korea. A report after last year's summit identified the extent of North Korea's network of missile bases.
However, this is not a breach of the Singapore agreement -- as North Korea has not made any commitment to halt any weapons development or shut down its missile bases.
(with IANS inputs)
