Trump to meet with N. Korean leader by May
Kim reportedly committed to ending nuclear testing
TOKYO — President Donald Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for talks by the end of May, an extraordinary development following months of heightened nuclear tension during which the two leaders exchanged frequent military threats and insults.
Kim has also committed to stopping nuclear and missile testing, even during joint military drills in South Korea next month, Chung Eui-yong, the South Korean national security adviser, told reporters at the White House on Thursday. Chung extended the invitation from Kim to meet while briefing Trump on
the four-hour dinner he had with the North Korean leader in Pyongyang on Monday.
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 United States and the world.
But there is also significant risk for Trump in agreeing to a meeting apparently without the kind of firm preconditions sought by previous U.S. administrations. There has never been a face-to-face meeting, or even a phone call, between sitting leaders of the two nations because American presidents have been wary of offering the Kim regime the validation of a leaders-level summit on the global stage.
A senior White House official said the North Korean leader’s message included a “commitment to denuclearization” and emphasized that the United States would demand verification that the North is meeting its obligations in any prospective deal. Trump told aides that, leading up to the talks, he expects them to maintain the severe economic sanctions imposed on the North over the past year by his administration and the United Nations, the official said.
The news stunned Washington’s political leadership and foreign policy analysts who as recently as last month were fretting over the possibility of a military conflagration on the Korean Peninsula. Trump and Kim have spent the past year making belligerent statements about each other, with Trump mocking Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and pledging to “totally destroy” North Korea and Kim calling the American president a “dotard” and a “lunatic” and threatening to send nuclear bombs to Washington, D.C.
But renewed dialogue between North and South Korea leading up to and during the Olympics last month offered an opening. Kim has “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” Chung told reporters during a brief statement outside the White House after emerging from the meeting with Trump.
“President Trump said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May,” Chung said, but he did not provide any information on where the meeting would be. In Seoul, the presidential Blue House clarified that the meeting would occur by the end of May.
There was no immediate word on where a meeting would be held, although it would be unprecedented if it took place outside the Korean Peninsula.
The White House confirmed that Trump had accepted Kim’s invitation, which came as a message from Chung rather than in a letter from the North Korean leader. “President Trump greatly appreciates the nice words of the South Korean delegation and President Moon (Jae-in). He will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain.”
Trump took to Twitter on Thursday night to laud the announcement. “Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!” he wrote.
Former U.S. officials cautioned that the North has made promises before, only to break them. During President George W. Bush’s second term, after talks with the United States and several other nations, the North agreed to freeze parts of its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some economic sanctions. Then, it violated the agreement by testing more missiles.
Danny Russel, who served as senior Asia director at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama, noted that the Kim regime has sought talks with the U.S. president as a way to gain legitimacy as a nuclear power.
“They have long said that ‘if the president would engage directly, then who knows what’s possible?’ ” Russel said. “The fact that they’re looking for the face and the legitimization and the validation of direct engagement of the president of the United States is not new. And it’s not inconsistent with their strategy of seeking to be treated like the Soviet Union, seeking to be accepted as a nuclear peer.”
Any meeting between Trump and Kim would be historic. Former president Jimmy Carter met Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung, and former president Bill Clinton met his father, Kim Jong Il — during visits to Pyongyang after they had left office. Both Carter and Clinton also went to Pyongyang to collect Americans who had been imprisoned by the regime.
Chung led the South Korean delegation earlier this week to North Korea, where Kim and his senior cadre expressed a willingness to hold talks with the United States and were prepared to discuss denuclearization and normalizing relations.
During the meetings, Kim “made it clear” that the North would not resume provocations while engaged in those talks, Chung said Tuesday upon returning to Seoul.
In front of the White House on Thursday night, Chung credited Trump for bringing the North Korean leader to the table, continuing Seoul’s deliberate efforts to flatter the American president.
“I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum-pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture,” Chung said.
It was an extraordinary scene — a foreign official, unaccompanied by U.S. leaders, briefing the press at the White House about the American president’s plans. Chung was flanked by Suh Hoon, the head of South Korea’s intelligence agency, who was also at the dinner in Pyongyang, and Cho Yoon-jae, the South Korean ambassador to the United States.
A senior administration official said the White House meeting between Trump and the South Korean officials included senior presidential aides, among them Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general. Trump spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after the meeting.