Security

Trump proposes meeting with Kim Jong-un in demilitarized zone – The Guardian


Donald Trump has proposed a meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean peninsula between north and south.

Trump suggested in a tweet on Saturday morning, Japan Time, that he could meet the North Korean leader while visiting neighboring South Korea after attending the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan.

Trump later described his invitation as a spur-of-the-moment idea, telling reporters: “I just put out a feeler because I don’t know where he is right now, he may not be in North Korea.”

Kim very rarely leaves North Korea.

“We’ll see,” the president added. “If he’s there, we’ll see each other for two minutes. That’s all we can. But that will be fine.”

Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump)

After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!


June 28, 2019

Trump and Kim have met twice, first in Singapore last June and again in Hanoi in February. Neither summit has produced a comprehensive agreement that would see North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Trump’s first months in office were marked by belligerent, personal attacks between the president and the North Korean leader over North Korea’s nuclear program.

But since the two met in Singapore last June, the US president has touted a close personal bond with Kim. That meeting marked the first time a sitting American president had met with the North Korean leader.

And when North Korea conducted several weapons tests last month, Trump took up a surprisingly moderate tone. “Nobody’s happy about it,” the president said.

As he enters his re-election campaign, Trump is reliant on at least the appearance of diplomatic progress with North Korea as his principal foreign policy success. He has repeatedly insisted that the two countries were on a collision course to war before he came to office.

He told reporters on Saturday that it was a “good thing” that he and Kim “seem to get along very well”.

“It’s good to get along. Because frankly, if I didn’t become president, we’d be right now in a war with North Korea. You’d be having a war, right now, with North Korea. And by the way, that’s a certainty. That’s not, like, maybe.”

Trump’s desire to avoid bad news from the Korean peninsula has given Kim some leverage in his bid to have sanctions eased. But while Trump has so far ignored large-scale sanctions-busting by North Korea, Russia and China, he has shown himself willing to lift any part of the embargo formally.

As he left the White House for Asia earlier this week, Trump was asked whether he’d meet with Kim while he is in the region.

“I’ll be meeting with a lot of other people … but I may be speaking to him in a different form,” Trump said.

Such trips to the demilitarized zone, the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea, are usually undertaken under heavy security and the utmost secrecy.

Trump tried to visit the DMZ when he was in Seoul in November 2017, but his helicopter was grounded by heavy fog.

At the leaders’ first summit in Singapore in June last year, they promised an aspirational document of what they agreed that soon proved to be largely hollow. Kim agreed to the “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”, which for Pyongyang means a prolonged step-by-step and mutual process of disarmament, in which North Korea is first accepted as a nuclear weapons power. Trump, however, took the phrase to mean unilateral disarmament. Since then, the US president has insisted he is in no hurry for North Korea to disarm, as long as it continues to refrain from nuclear and missile tests.

After Pyongyang carried out short-range missile tests in May, US officials specified the latter condition as applying only to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the continental US. Meanwhile, the North Korean regime was warned that “its patience is wearing thin” over sanctions, implying that it would carry out more provocative actions.

Kim, like Trump, has invested in maintaining the appearance of bonhomie between the leaders despite the gap between their positions. This month, Trump said he had sent the North Korean dictator a “friendly letter” in return for “birthday wishes” from Kim.

The North Korean state news agency KCNA quoted Kim as saying “with satisfaction that the letter is of excellent content”.

“Kim Jong Un said that he would seriously contemplate the serious content” and appreciated the “extraordinary courage of President Trump”, KCNA added.





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