Where might Trump and Kim Jong Un Meet?
HONG KONG — Among the many questions about a meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, is where it might happen.
Trump is known for being a reluctant traveler. Kim is even more of a homebody, not leaving North Korea since he took over after his father’s death in 2011.
But if the two do meet, which some White House officials believe will never happen, they will need a venue suitable for such a historic moment. Here are a few options:
THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE
The village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas might be the most promising location. Occasional meetings have been held in a small conference room that straddles the dividing line in the Joint Security Area and that has entrances on either side of the border.
The Peace House on the South Korean side of Panmunjom is a larger building perhaps more suitable to a meeting between the two leaders. North and South Korean representatives met there to plan the North’s participation in the Winter Olympics last month in the South. And Kim has said he would go there to meet South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in.
PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA
The North Korean capital has been the site of high-level meetings before. Former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have visited, and inter-Korean summit meetings were held there in 2000 and 2007.
It might be an awkward setting for Trump, though, who would be wary of not being seen as a supplicant. And North Korea might want to give Trump, who has expressed an interest in military parades, a display of its own.
When Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000 in an attempt to convince Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father, to halt his ballistic missile program, she attended a mass propaganda performance that included an image of the very missile she was trying to get North Korea to curtail.
JEJU ISLAND, SOUTH KOREA
The governor of the South Korean island of Jeju has proposed holding the meeting there. The island, south of the Korean Peninsula, is a tourist destination, and its relatively small size and population could make security easier than in a large city like Seoul, the South’s capital.
WASHINGTON
Washington also would be a potential spot, although Kim most likely would be wary of making the U.S. capital his first trip abroad as North Korea’s leader.
A meeting there also would be awkward for the White House, which would be wary of the propaganda value it could give the North. When Marshal Jo Myong Rok, a high-level North Korean military official, visited Washington in 2000 to invite Clinton to Pyongyang, he first met with Albright while wearing a business suit. He then changed into a medal-festooned military uniform and high-brimmed hat to meet with Clinton, creating an uncomfortable image for the White House.