Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Back in U.S., Trump upbeat on Kim talks
Relationship ‘very good,’ president says
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday claimed his relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “very good,” despite the collapse of the two leaders’ summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.
A day after returning to Washington, Trump said on Twitter that the two had “very substantive negotiations.” He added, “We know what they want and they know what we must have.”
Trump did not address the push-back from North Korea, which disputed his account of why the summit fell apart. Trump had told reporters the summit failed because Kim insisted that all the sanctions on Pyongyang be lifted without the North committing to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.
North Korea disputed that, insisting it asked only for partial sanctions relief in exchange for closing its main nuclear complex.
China said Friday that the notion of lifting sanctions should be seized as “common ground.”
While the U.S. and North Korea have presented different accounts of why the summit failed, “both sides believe that the lifting of sanctions is an important component of the denuclearization process,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a regular news briefing.
Lu added that China welcomes the “positive will” expressed by the U.S. and North Korea to maintain communications.
Also Friday, U.S. officials said the Pentagon is permanently canceling the large-scale military exercises in South Korea usually held in the spring.
The timing of the decision raised questions about whether Trump was giving away a major piece of leverage over North Korea, which has long denounced the exercises as provocative, and failing to get anything in return.
“Why negotiate with the United States when it makes concessions for free?” Abraham Denmark, a former top Pentagon official during President Barack Obama’s administration, wrote in a tweet. He said the decision to halt the maneuvers would have “major implications for readiness” of U.S. and South Korean forces.
Thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops had conducted the exercises, known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle — annually for more than a decade. But last year, Trump suspended them, citing the cost and the need to ease tensions with North Korea.
The spring maneuvers will be replaced by smaller-scale training that doesn’t call for large-scale field maneuvers but still ensures that U.S. and South Korean forces can repel a North Korean invasion, said the officials, who did not want speak on the record ahead of the formal announcement, expected today.
Trump has repeatedly complained about the largescale exercises, saying they’re too costly and that the U.S. bears too much of the financial burden. But defenders say the training is relatively cheap, noting estimates that spring exercises cost $14 million a year.
The president hinted at the decision to cancel them Thursday at a news conference in Hanoi.
“Those exercises are very expensive,” Trump said. “And I was telling the generals, I said: Look, you know, exercising is fun and it’s nice and they play the war games. And I’m not saying it’s not necessary, because, at some levels, it is, but at other levels, it’s not. But it’s a very, very expensive thing. And, you know, we do have to think about that, too.”
‘BY ANY MEANS’
Separately, in a nationally televised address for a public holiday, President Moon Jae-in said the collapse of the summit between Trump and Kim only made South Korea’s role “more important” to help the two sides reach “a complete settlement by any means.”
Moon spoke optimistically about denuclearization, economic integration between North and South Korea, and a “new order of peace and security in Northeast Asia.”
Moon has invested his presidency and personal prestige on engagement with Pyongyang, and his popularity in South Korea was boosted by three successive summits with Kim. He also helped broker the first summit meeting between Trump and Kim in Singapore, and this week’s repeat one in Hanoi.
“The summit fallout will deal a blow to the Seoul government,” said Shin Beomchul, a researcher at Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “South Korea cannot go against their ally United States, so it will grudgingly stick to the sanctions enforcement in place.”
Moon had talked of establishing road and rail links with North Korea as a first step toward the sort of economic integration Europe established after World War II. He also has been keen to restart a joint economic zone in Kaesong in North Korea, that was closed in 2016 during North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing, as well as a joint tourism project at Mount Kumgang.
Although sanctions still block the way, Moon said in the speech Friday that he will “consult” with Washington to resume operations at both places.
VIETNAM POMP
Meanwhile, Kim smiled broadly as he walked down a red carpet with Vietnam’s president Friday, a military band playing as stiff-backed soldiers goose-stepped by.
With Trump back in Washington, Kim seemed confident and poised as he stepped out of his armored limousine, embraced President Nguyen Phu Trong, the country’s top leader and Communist Party chief, and accepted a bouquet of flowers from a beaming girl.
Today, he is expected to be driven back to the border with China where he will board his armored train for a 60-plus-hour trip, through the sprawl of China, back home to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. But Friday saw his black limousine rolling beneath fluttering Vietnamese and North Korean flags — the U.S. ones have been mostly taken down — as a large crowd jammed the city’s streets and waved flowers.
After his meeting Friday with Trong, Kim met with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc before attending a state banquet in his own honor.
Kim’s trip to Vietnam, the fourth country he has visited since taking power in 2011, contrasts sharply with his time in Singapore last June, when he and Trump held their first direct talks and Kim also played the tourist.
Taking a stroll through a futuristic flower garden and stopping by a rooftop bar, Kim appeared to relish Singapore’s modernity. He grinned for a selfie by Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign minister, which was quickly posted online.
This time, there were no selfies. There has been no tourism. There will be no more news conferences.
Still, Kim stood shoulder to shoulder with Trump at both summits, images that allow his propaganda services to portray him to his people and supporters as the leader of a nuclear-armed power, not an international pariah that starves its citizens so it can build nukes and missiles. In Hanoi, he answered questions with humor and ease when confronted by an aggressive international media contingent. And, crucially for his image at home, he stood firm on his demands for the relief of sanctions imposed over a nuclear program North Korea says it built in the face of unrelenting U.S. hostility meant to end its leadership.
Kim, as he considers his next move after Hanoi, also will be backed by state-controlled media that were already busy portraying the summit as a victory for their leader, saying Kim and Trump “appreciated that the second meeting in Hanoi offered an important occasion for deepening mutual respect and trust and putting the relations between the two countries on a new stage.”
It’s unclear what will come next. The worst-case scenario would be a return to the personal insults and threats of war between Trump and Kim in 2017 as the North staged a series of increasingly powerful weapons tests, including a nuclear detonation and displays of long-range missiles that can target the U.S. mainland, though experts believe those ICBMs are not yet complete.
Trump maintained ahead of the Hanoi summit that the economic benefits of a deal could push Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions.
Kim came into the summit feeling confident that he could settle something that would end painful economic sanctions while letting him keep much of his nuclear program and only making a “a variety of gestures that mimic disarmament,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, wrote after the summit collapse. This outcome would be a signal that “the world must live with North Korea’s bomb, but Kim won’t rub it in anyone’s face.”
“Since it would be utter madness to try to topple a nuclear-armed dictator, it seems obvious which side should yield,” Lewis said. If Trump “does not accept the reality that we now live with a nuclear-armed North Korea, then we are doomed to the collapse of negotiations, and perhaps even a return to the terror of 2017.”