U.S. President-elect Donald Trump named former State Department official Alex Wong , who handled negotiations with North Korea during his first term in office, as the new deputy national security advisor.

In a statement on Friday, Trump said Wong, as then-deputy special representative for North Korea, "helped negotiate" the historic summit with regime leader Kim Jong-un.

Wong had accompanied then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he visited Pyongyang in July 2018 for discussions on follow-up measures to the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore the previous month.

Wong later served as the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs.