Koreas meet in bid to salvage summit
Trump suggests talks with Kim could still occur June 12
SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held an unannounced two-hour meeting on Saturday in an attempt to salvage the canceled summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim.
It was their second face-to-face meeting in a month and came only hours after South Korea expressed relief over revived talks between Pyongyang and Washington and the prospect that a summit might once again happen.
The meeting was held on the North Korean side of Panmunjom, the truce village that straddles the North-South border in the Korean Peninsula’s Demilitarized Zone.
The leaders discussed implementing agreements from the previous summit they held at Panmunjom on April 27, as well as ways to pull off a North KoreaU.S. summit, according to South Korean spokesman Yoon Young-chan.
Trump canceled the summit, set for June 12 in Singapore, on Thursday, citing the “tremendous anger and open hostility” Pyongyang had recently demonstrated in its communications.
Trump has seemed to soften his stance since then, announcing in a tweet on Friday evening that the U.S. was having “very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the Summit,” and that if it were held, the meeting would likely remain in Singapore on June 12.
South Korea, which brokered the talks between Washington and Pyongyang, was caught off guard by Trump’s abrupt cancellation of the Kim summit.
Moon said Trump’s decision left him “perplexed” and was “very regrettable.” He urged Washington and Pyongyang to resolve their differences through “more direct and closer dialogue between their leaders.”
North Korea issued an unusually restrained and diplomatic response to Trump, saying it’s still willing to sit for talks with the United States “at any time, (in) any format.”