KOREA SUMMIT SET FOR JUNE 12.
President Donald Trump announced in a tweet on Thursday that his meeting with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un will be held June 12 in Singapore. Here’s what you need to know about the approaching summit.
SINGAPORE? WHY SINGAPORE?
Perhaps the better question is why not Singapore. Sometimes called the Switzerland of Asia, the small nation is a natural choice for the historic summit, analysts say. Among the factors are its proximity to North Korea — key, given Kim’s aging fleet of Soviet-era aircraft — the experience of its security forces, and the fact that Pyongyang has had diplomatic relations with the country since 1975. It’s also a common port of call for U.S. warships; the U.S. navy operates a logistics headquarters there. Mongolia was considered but was seen as too close to China, U.S. officials said. A quick trip to Pyongyang was also seen as bad optics for Trump. The president’s own preference was for the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, but aides argued that this would look too much like Trump going to Kim’s turf. “Kim will be on friendly territory, not hostile territory. But he wouldn’t be on home turf,” said Tom Plant, who specializes in nuclear and proliferation issues at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
WHAT’S ON AGENDA?
Trump hopes to convince Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons and the missiles that can carry them. Kim hasn’t revealed his goals, but certainly the lifting of crippling economic sanctions would be one of them. “I think we have a very good chance of doing something very meaningful,” Trump told reporters gathered at a U.S. military base in Maryland at 3 a.m. Thursday for the arrival of three American hostages freed from North Korea. “My proudest achievement will be — this is part of it — when we denuclearize that entire peninsula.”
WHAT BROUGHT US TO THIS POINT?
Trump has credited a U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign for drawing North Korea to the negotiating table and vowed to keep economic sanctions in place until Pyongyang takes concrete steps to denuclearize. But former spy chief Kim Yong Chul, director of North Korea’s United Front Department, said in a toast to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over lunch in Pyongyang this week: “We have perfected our nuclear capability. It is our policy to concentrate all efforts into economic progress ... This is not the result of sanctions that have been imposed from outside.” To a question about Kim’s motivation, Trump said of the authoritarian leader: “I think he did this because I really think he wants to do something and bring that country into the real world. I really believe that.”