Trump sets June 12 date for Kim talks
North Korean, U.S. leaders plan meeting in Singapore
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will be held June 12 in Singapore.
The announcement came in a tweet just hours after Trump met the three recently freed American captives at Joint Base Andrews, where they arrived in the middle of the night after their release by North Korea.
The summit will be the first face-to-face meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Releasing the Americans removed a significant obstacle for Trump as he heads into the peace talks. A senior U.S. official said their release was a U.S. condition to the talks.
The president praised Kim and said he was “nice in letting them go before the meeting.” Last year Trump and Kim both threatened nuclear war.
“We’re starting off on a new footing,” Trump said early Thursday.
Trump had floated other possible locations, including the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and
South Korea, where Kim met last month with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, which he said held the potential for being a “great celebration.”
But White House aides have been looking at Singapore, a tiny island nation of 5.6 million that boasts one of the most advanced economies in Southeast Asia.
Singapore maintains diplomatic relations with North Korea, which has an embassy and ambassador in the country. Singapore’s ambassador based in Beijing also is responsible for Pyongyang.
“Singapore is an ideal location for this summit,” said David Adelman, an attorney at ReedSmith who served as U.S. ambassador to the nation from 2010 to 2013 under former President Barack Obama.
“Really since its founding, Singapore has carefully cultivated a reputation where East meets West,” he said. “They take great pride in being a friend to all. And they’ve done a great job doing so.”
The country has been the site of other high-profile summits. It plays host to an annual regional security conference, called the Shangri-La Dialogue, which usually draws the U.S. defense secretary and top officials from China and other nations. In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou met in Singapore, the first meeting between the leaders of those two countries in seven years.
Trump and Kim “will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” Trump said of the summit later on Twitter. He told reporters, “I think it’s going to be a big success.”
Trump hopes to persuade Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons and the missiles that can carry them.
Kim has suspended nuclear and missile tests and put his nuclear program up for negotiation, but questions remain about how serious his offer is and what disarmament steps he would be willing to take. The White House has said withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from South Korea is “not on the table.”
“Hopefully everything is going to work out at the highest level,” Trump said earlier Thursday. “We want to thank Kim Jong Un, who really was excellent to these three incredible people.”
Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York said he could not understand the praise Kim was receiving from Trump and others for releasing the three prisoners.
“We can’t be fooled into giving the North Korean regime credit for returning Americans that never should have been detained in the first place. American citizens are not diplomatic bargaining chips,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “So while we celebrate the return of the three Americans for the sake of their freedom and their families, we should not feel like we need to give Kim Jong Un anything in return.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., congratulated the Trump administration for what he described as a “significant step.”
“I share in the hopes of our entire nation that the June 12th meeting will further our longtime goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula,” McConnell said in a statement Thursday. “This is as close as we’ve ever come to a Korean Peninsula without nuclear weapons,” McConnell added in a Twitter post.
The arrival of the men was the culmination of a whirlwind 20 hours since the three were freed in a diplomatic moment that White House officials described as a “positive gesture of goodwill” from Kim’s regime ahead of the summit.
Long before dawn Thursday, with the former detainees by his side on the air base tarmac, Trump said it was a “great honor” to welcome them back to the U.S. but “the true honor is going to be if we have a victory in getting rid of nuclear weapons.”
Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, other top officials and first lady Melania Trump joined the president for the air base celebration. The former detainees — Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song and Tony Kim — had been released Wednesday at the end of Pompeo’s visit to North Korea.
They appeared tired but in excellent spirits, flashing peace signs and waving their arms as they emerged from the aircraft.
Pence said Pompeo had told him that at a refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska, “one of the detainees asked to go outside the plane because he hadn’t seen daylight in a very long time.” The men
were taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for evaluation before being reunited with their families.
Pence said on NBC News, “In this moment the regime in North Korea has been dealing, as far as we can see, in good faith.”
Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who was among several Republican lawmakers who dined Wednesday evening with Trump and national security adviser John Bolton before the detainees returned, said their release was a positive development, but he remained cautious about North Korea’s intentions.
“We are in uncharted waters,” he said. “This is the highest level diplomacy that the United States has to offer. Failure would be a significant setback to diplomatic efforts.”
Kim Dong Chul, 64, a South Korea-born U.S. citizen, was the longest-serving detainee. He received a 10-year prison term with hard labor in April 2016 for “perpetrating state subversive plots and espionage against” North Korea.
Tony Kim, who also goes by the Korean name Kim Sang-duk, was detained at the Pyongyang airport in April 2017 for “criminal acts of hostility aimed to overturn” North Korea, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency, which didn’t detail those acts.
Kim Hak Song was accused of engaging in unspecified “hostile acts” against North Korea, and was detained last May.
Speaking through an interpreter, Kim Dong Chul told reporters that it felt “like a dream. We are very, very happy.” Asked how they were treated in North Korea, he replied: “We were treated in many different ways. Me, I had to do a lot of labor, but when I got sick, I was also treated by them.”
Trump’s decision to greet them in the middle of the night illustrated the political importance the president has attached to their release as a sign that his high-stakes diplomatic gambit with the North is paying dividends. But top administration officials, including Pence, reaffirmed Wednesday that the United States will maintain pressure on the North in pursuit of the goal of dismantling its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
Asked whether the release of the men changed how he plans to negotiate with Kim, Trump said: “No not at all. We very much appreciate he allowed them to go before the meeting.”
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.”
Even as Trump praised Kim for releasing the hostages, he acknowledged that another American hostage, Otto Warmbier, “really suffered” while he was in the North’s custody. Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, died last June, just days after he was released from 17 months of North Korean captivity. Trump said in September that, “Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea.”
No other Americans are known to be held in North Korea against their will.