Trump, North Korean leader meet across Demilitarized Zone in a first for nations.
SEOUL — President Trump became the first sitting American commander in chief to set foot in North Korea on Sunday as he met Kim Jong Un, the country’s leader, at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, and the two agreed to restart negotiations on a longelusive nuclear agreement.
Greeted by a beaming Kim, the president stepped across a low concrete border marker at 3:46 p.m. local time and walked 20 paces to the base of a building on the North Korean side for an unprecedented, camerafriendly demonstration of friendship intended to revitalize stalled talks.
“It is good to see you again,” an exuberant Kim told the president through an interpreter. “I never expected to meet you in this place.”
“Big moment, big moment,” Trump told him.
After about a minute on officially hostile territory, Trump escorted Kim back over the line into South Korea, where the two briefly addressed reporters before slipping inside the building known as Freedom House for a private conversation along with President Moon Jaein of South Korea. Trump said he will invite Kim to visit him at the White House.
“This has a lot of significance because it means that we want to bring an end to the unpleasant past and try to create a new future,” Kim told reporters. “So it’s a very courageous and determined act.”
“Stepping across that line was a great honor,” Trump replied. “A lot of progress has been made, a lot of friendships have been made.”
Trump delighted in the drama of the moment, which he had arranged with an invitation via Twitter barely 24 hours earlier. Never before had American and North Korean leaders gotten together at the military demarcation line, where heavily armed forces have faced off across a tense divide for 66 years since the end of fighting in the Korean War.
The encounter in Panmunjom had been cast as a brief handshake, not a formal negotiation. After emerging from their conversation, Trump said he and Kim had agreed to designate negotiators to resume talks in the next few weeks, four months after they collapsed at a summit in Hanoi.
Critics called the DMZ greeting an overhyped photo opportunity by a president who himself ratcheted up the conflict with North Korea in his first year in office by pledging to unleash “fire and fury” if it threatened U.S. security. Peter Baker and Michael Crowley are New York Times writers.