Trump, Kim to meet ‘by May’
TOKYO • North Korea’s belligerent leader, Kim Jong Un, has asked U.S. President Donald Trump for talks and Trump has agreed to meet him “by May,” South Korea’s national security adviser said at the White House Thursday after delivering the invitation.
Kim has also committed to stopping nuclear and missile testing, even during joint military drills in South Korea last month, Chung Eui-yong told reporters in Washington.
After a year in which North Korea fired intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching all of the United States and tested what is widely thought to have been a hydrogen bomb, such a moratorium would be welcomed by the U.S. and the world.
Kim Jong Un “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” Chung said. “President Trump said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May.” Chung did not provide any information on where the meeting would be. Chung led the South Korean delegation to North Korea earlier this week, where he had a four-hour dinner with the reclusive Kim. During the meetings in Pyongyang, Kim and his senior cadres expressed a willingness to hold talks with the U.S. and was prepared to discuss denuclearization and normalizing relations. During the meetings, Kim “made it clear” that it would not resume provocations while engaged in those talks, Chung said Tuesday upon returning to Seoul. Chung and Suh Hoon, the head of South Korea’s intelligence agency who was also at the dinner in Pyongyang, arrived in Washington Thursday to brief Trump and his senior officials on the meetings.
In front of the White House Thursday night, Chung credited Trump for bringing the North Korean leader to the table, continuing Seoul’s deliberate efforts to flatter the president.
It was an extraordinary scene — a foreign official, unaccompanied by U.S. leaders, briefing the press at the White House.
Kim sent his sister, Kim Yo Jong, to South Korea at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang last month to deliver an invitation to South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to hold a summit. Preparations are now underway for that meeting. Trump said North Korea was responding to the “maximum pressure” his administration was applying. In addition to threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea if it did not give up its nuclear weapons program, the Trump administration has been leading the efforts to impose increasingly tough sanctions.