U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit North Korea in October to pave the way for a second summit between President Donald Trump and the North's leader, Kim Jong Un, the State Department said Wednesday.

Pompeo met North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho in New York and accepted Kim's invitation to travel to Pyongyang next month to make progress toward achieving denuclearization of the North and to prepare for a Trump-Kim summit, department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

(Pompeo meets Ri)[State Department photo]

Earlier Wednesday, Trump said he will announce the timing and location of his next meeting with Kim, chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, North Korea's ruling party, in the "very near future."

"I'll be meeting with Chairman Kim in the very near future," Trump told reporters at the United Nations. "We'll be announcing where and when in the very near future."

Speaking at a news conference in New York, Trump said he and Kim have "a very good relationship."

"He likes me. I like him. We get along," the president said, noting he received two letters from Kim recently. "I think we're going to make a deal."

Trump said he showed one of the two letters to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during their meeting Wednesday. Trump quoted Abe as saying it is a "groundbreaking" letter.

Referring to his "very positive" meeting with Ri, Pompeo said they discussed a Trump-Kim summit and the next steps toward the denuclearization of North Korea.

"Much work remains, but we will continue to move forward," the chief U.S. diplomat said in a Twitter post.

On Sept. 10, the White House said Trump had received a request from Kim for a second meeting, and that the administration had begun the process of coordinating such an event.

South Korean President Moon Jae In discussed the possible timing and location of a second U.S.-North Korea summit during a meeting with Trump on Monday in New York, and later told Fox News in an interview that it could happen before the end of the year.

Speaking Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly, Trump hailed Kim's "courage" in taking steps toward denuclearization, but said "sanctions will stay in place until denuclearization occurs."

At his historic meeting with Kim in June in Singapore, the North Korean leader committed to "complete" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Since then, Kim has made clear in his messages to Trump that "he is intent on denuclearizing," Pompeo said in an interview with CBS News on Wednesday.

"He understands the scope of that and what that means," the secretary of state said. "He has been very consistent in his commitment to delivering on that promise."

"We're going to make sure there's no more missile tests, no more nuclear tests...We're going to continue to work towards denuclearization and it will take a while."

In two days of summit talks with Moon in Pyongyang last week, Kim pledged to dismantle North Korea's main nuclear complex in the country's northwest if the United States takes unspecified reciprocal actions, as well as to permanently close the North's key missile test site in the presence of international experts.

But he stopped short of meeting the U.S. demand for a full and honest declaration of his country's nuclear weapons program, including weapons and fissile materials, as a first concrete step toward denuclearization, or presenting a roadmap for that goal.