SEOUL – A South Korean delegation met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un onMonday, a South Korean official said, after arriving in the North on avisit aimed at encouraging North Korea and the United States to talk.

Both North Korea and the United States have expressed a willingness totalk, but the long-held U.S. position is that the North first give up itsnuclear weapons program.

The North, which has vowed never to give up its nuclear deterrent againstwhat it sees as U.S. hostility, says it will not sit down to talks underpreconditions.

Reclusive North Korea, which has made no secret of its pursuit of anuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the mainland United States indefiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, is also concerned aboutjoint U.S.-South Korea military exercises, which it sees as preparation forwar.

South Korean officials have said the drills will start next month asplanned, after being postponed for the Winter Olympics held last month inSouth Korea.

The 10-member South Korean delegation, led by National Security Office headChung Eui-yong, was greeted by North Korean officials after landing inPyongyang, said Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for South Korea’s presidentialoffice.

The North Koreans at the airport included Ri Son Gwon, chairman of theCommittee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, and Kim Yong Chol,who heads the United Front Department, the North Korean office responsiblefor handling inter-Korean affairs. Both visited South Korea last monthduring the Winter Olympics.

The South Korean delegation was later invited to join Kim Jong Un fordinner, the South Korean spokesman added.

The South Korean officials are the most senior officials from the South tomeet Kim Jong Un since he took power in late 2011 following the death ofhis father, Kim Jong Il.

“We will deliver President Moon Jae-in’s wish to bring aboutdenuclearization of the Korean peninsula and permanent peace by extendingthe goodwill and better inter-Korean relations created by the PyeongchangWinter Olympics,” Chung said in South Korea before the delegation’sdeparture.

Chung’s team includes National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon and ViceUnification Minister Chun Hae-sung.

The government hopes the visit will create“a positive atmosphere”,Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told a regular briefing.

Chung and Suh are due to fly to Washington later in the week to brief U.S.officials on their discussions in the North.

Thawing relations between the Korean neighbors have prompted speculationabout direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang after months of tensionand exchanges of bellicose insults between U.S. President Donald Trump andKim Jong Un fueled fears of war.

North Korea has not carried out any weapons tests since late November, whenit tested its largest intercontinental ballistic missile. Inter-Koreantalks began after Kim Jong Un said in his New Year’s address that he wantedto engage the South.

North Korea later sent athletes to the Olympics, as well as a high-rankingdelegation that included Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong.

Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technicallystill at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peacetreaty.

The North regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, theUnited States, which stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of theKorean War.

“Neither sanctions nor provocations nor threats can ever undermine ourposition of a nuclear weapons state,” the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspapersaid recently.

“Hoping that the DPRK would abandon its nuclear programs is as foolish anact as trying to wish seas to get dried up,” it said, referring to itselfby its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Agencies