Report: UN chief to visit North Korea this week

SEOUL, South Korea – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit Pyongyang this week for a possible meeting with leader Kim Jong Un, a South Korean news report said.

The possible trip comes six months after Pyongyang at the last minute canceled an invitation for Ban to visit a factory park in the North Korean city of Kaesong. Ban has said North Korea gave no reason for the cancellation. He had not planned to visit Pyongyang at that time.

Yonhap news agency cited an unidentified source in the U.N. when it reported Sunday about Ban’s Pyongyang trip. It gave no details on the purpose of the trip or the day it would take place.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said he had no comment.

If the trip does take place, Ban would be the first U.N. head to visit North Korea since Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1993.

Yonhap, quoting another unidentified U.N. source, said Ban is expected to meet Kim because it’s unlikely for the secretary-general to visit a U.N. member state without meeting the country’s leader.

That source was quoted as saying Ban’s trip could serve as a breakthrough in the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and strained ties between the two Koreas. Ban was South Korea’s foreign minister before taking up the top U.N. job.

Ban had said before his canceled Kaesong park trip that he hoped his visit would help improve ties between the Koreas. Analysts in Seoul said at the time that Pyongyang may have scrapped the trip because it felt Ban would back only the views of Washington and Seoul.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.