“According to the will of both leaders, the South and North agreed to hold the ‘2018 South-North summit’ on April 27 at the South’s Peace House in Panmunjom,” said a joint press statement, read out in turn by both delegations’ leaders.

The leaders will hold talks at the Peace House in the border village of Panmunjom, a joint statement said, according to the South’s Yonhap news agency.

The meeting between Kim Jong Un, leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, and the South’s President Moon Jae-in will be only the third of its kind, and will be followed by landmark talks with US President Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters Thursday: “I expect that the upcoming South-North summit and the U.S. summit will leave a foundation for a permanent denuclearization and a peace regime on the Korean peninsula.”

China has long been the North’s key diplomatic defender and provider of trade and aid, but relations have been strained by Pyongyang’s weapons programmes, with Beijing showing a new willingness to implement UN sanctions against it.

Even so the two leaders hailed their nations’ historic ties, with Xi accepting Kim’s invitation to visit Pyongyang, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

As part of that deal, North Korea agreed to suspend missiles and nuclear weapons tests and to not object publicly to joint military drills held by the U.S. and South Korea, the White House said.

The official Xinhua news agency said Kim paid an “unofficial visit” to Beijing this week and met with President Xi Jinping at the Chinese leader’s request

Kim pledged that he was “committed to denuclearisation” on the Korean peninsula, according to China’s Xinhua news agency—but added this would depend on South Korea and the US taking what he called “progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace”.