Korean leaders announce Pyongyang summit with Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in

Agreement comes amid ongoing nuclear standoff between Washington and North Korea

South Korean President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their summit in May (Reuters)

The leaders of North and South Korea will meet for the third time this year, the South Korean Unification Ministry has announced.

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in are expected to hold a summit in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in September, just months after they signed the Panmunjom Declaration, pledging to formally end the Korean war and better economic cooperation and to formally end the Korean War.

The upcoming reunion will be the third meeting of the two men this year. Their first meeting in April was a highly publicised affair and they met again in May at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that divides the North and South for more informal talks.

Although the two sides did not release an exact date for the summit, it is believed that senior officials from the rival Koreas ironed out the details during a fresh round of talks led by South’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon and Ri Son Gwon, chairman of the North’s reunification committee at the DMZ.

Mr Ri said it was important to clear “obstacles” that prevent inter-Korean relations because if issues were not resolved, "unexpected problems could emerge and the issues that are already on the schedule may face difficulties".

Mr Moon, who is strong advocate for greater engagement with North Korea, is credited with using this year's Winter Olympics to help warm relations between Pyongyang and the rest of the world after a tense 2017.

His commitment to peace is said to have paved the way for the April inter-Korean summit and US President Donald Trump's meeting with Kim in Singapore in June, the first ever between sitting leaders of North Korea and the United States.

News of the forthcoming summit comes amid an ongoing standoff between Washington and Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programmes.

In a meeting with Donald Trump back in June, Kim Jong-un agreed to work towards denuclearising the Korean peninsula but the foreign ministry has since hit out at Washington's efforts to maintain sanctions despite what Pyongyang says are goodwill gestures

North Korea’s foreign ministry said that despite dismantling a nuclear testing site and returning the remains of some US soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War, America has an “outdated acting script” and has "responded to our expectation by inciting international sanctions and pressure”.

Additional reporting by Reuters