U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo voiced hope that U.S. President Donald Trump and the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Un will meet again "in the coming months" and make significant headway on ending Pyongyang's nuclear program.

In an interview broadcast Monday, the top U.S. diplomat cautioned it was difficult to know the timing of a third U.S.-DPRK summit but said: "It's in America's best interest to resolve this as quickly as we can.  

"I would hope in the coming months our two leaders will be back together ... in a way that we can achieve a substantive first step or a substantive big step along the path to denuclearization." 

His remarks were made to radio station WHP 580 in Pennsylvania's capital Harrisburg. 

"Then the final, fully denuclearized Korean peninsula can be realized, at which time, as President Trump said, there'll be a brighter future for the North Korean (DPRK) people. It's just hard to know what the timing will be," he said. 

Trump and Kim met for the first time in June 2018, a landmark first summit between the two countries that never formally ended the 1950-53 Korean War. A follow-up summit in February in Hanoi abruptly ended early, with Trump heeding his aides and refusing to lift sanctions until the DPRK takes significant steps to denuclearize. Trump, however, has said that he still is fond of the DPRK's leader and recently intervened to stop the imposition of tighter U.S. sanctions.

(Cover: Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state, listens during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 27, 2019. /VCG Photo)