U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will not visit North Korea next week, a U.N. spokesperson said Wednesday, denying a Chinese news report that Ban will make a rare trip to the North next week.
“The Secretary-General will not be traveling to the DPRK next week,” a U.N. spokesperson said in a statement, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The statement said Ban will be in “New York most of next week and then travel to Malta for the Commonwealth Summit.”
Citing the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, China’s state-run Xinhua reported from Pyongyang that Ban will arrive in the capital city next Monday and stay there for around four days.
In May, Ban planned to visit the North Korean border city of Kaesong, where South Korea runs an industrial complex, but the trip was called off at the last minute because Pyongyang abruptly withdrew its invitation for no clear reason.
Some analysts said at the time that Pyongyang appeared to have taken issue with Ban’s remarks that North Korea’s missile launches represent a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, has repeatedly said that he will do everything possible to promote inter-Korean reconciliation and a resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue. (Yonhap)
