U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet with his North Korean counterpart on Thursday in New York to continue denuclearization talks, the State Department said Monday.

Pompeo and Kim Yong Chol, a vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, will discuss issues including "achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization" of North Korea, the department said in a brief statement.

(Mike Pompeo (R) shake hands with Kim Yong Chol in New York in May 2018) [Photo courtesy of the U.S. State Department]

The ruling party vice chairman is a close aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. They are also expected to discuss a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader.

Pompeo is being accompanied by Stephen Biegun, U.S. special representative to North Korea, the department said -- a sign that Biegun's counterpart Choe Son Hui, a North Korean vice foreign minister in charge of negotiations with the United States, may travel to New York with the vice chairman.

If realized, it would be the first meeting between Biegun and Choe.

The two countries have been at odds over ways to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

North Korea has yet to take credible action to dismantle its weapons programs despite Kim Jong Un pledging in a historic meeting with Trump in June in Singapore to work toward "complete" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Separately, the department said a second meeting between top foreign affairs and defense officials of the United States and China will take place on Friday in Washington.

Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will host a Chinese delegation led by Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and National Defense Minister Wei Fenghe.