Trump, Kim agree to meet June 12 in Singapore
He hails release of 3, will meet Kim on June 12 in Singapore
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for summit talks June 12 in Singapore. Trump said the U.S. goal is “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. It will be first face-toface North Korea-U.S. summit since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. “We’re starting off on a new footing,” Trump said. Trump preceded the announcement by hosting a pre-dawn made-for-TV welcome home for three Americans held by Kim’s government.
WASHINGTON — Envisioning “a very special moment for world peace,” President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for summit talks June 12 in Singapore. He set the stage for the announcement by hosting a pre-dawn made-for-TV welcome home for three Americans held by Kim’s government.
Trump and Kim agreed to the first face-to-face North Korea-U.S. summit since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. It’s the most consequential foreign policy effort in Trump’s presidency as North Korea’s nuclear program approaches a milestone — the capacity to strike the continental U.S. with a thermonuclear warhead.
Trump said the U.S. is aiming for “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, but he has yet to fill in just what steps that might include.
“We’re starting off on a new footing,” Trump said of himself and Kim as he welcomed the detainees in a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. He hailed their release as a potential breakthrough in relations between the nations.
He and Kim “will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” he said of the summit later on Twitter.
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 U.S. troops from South Korea is “not on the table.”
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.”
The ceremony, which also featured a giant U.S. flag suspended between the ladders of two firetrucks, emphasized Trump’s penchant for the dramatic as he raised expectations for the summit.
He had wanted to hold the summit in the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas but yielded to the concerns of officials who thought a DMZ meeting would focus attention on relations between the North and South rather than the nuclear question.
Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, other top officials and first lady Melania Trump joined the president for the pre-dawn celebration. The former detainees — Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song — 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 at 3 a.m. Thursday. One said through a translator, “It’s like a dream; we are very, very happy.”
Pence said Pompeo had told him that at a refueling stop in 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.
Trump thanked North Korea’s Kim for releasing the Americans and said, “I really think he wants to do something” on denuclearization.
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, RColo., who was among several GOP lawmakers who dined with Trump and national security adviser John Bolton on Wednesday before the detainees returned, said their release was a positive development, but he remained cautious about Kim’s intentions.
“We are in uncharted waters,” Gardner said.
As for the venue, why Singapore?
Principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah said the country has relationships with the U.S. and North Korea, meaning both leaders’ security — and a sense of neutrality — can be assured.
Located at the southern tip of Malaysia, the citystate is a regional Southeast Asia hub whose free-enterprise philosophy welcomes trading partners from everywhere. It has diplomatic and military ties with the U.S. and is also familiar ground for North Korea, with which it established diplomatic relations in 1975.
“Since their independence, they’ve very deliberately developed a reputation as an honest broker between East and West,” said David Adelman, the former U.S. ambassador.
The White House choreographed the detainees’ arrival at the base Thursday, with Trump telling reporters, “I think you probably broke the all-time-in-history television rating for 3 o’clock in the morning.”
The last American to be released before this, college student Otto Warmbier, died in June 2017, days after he was repatriated to the U.S. with severe brain damage. Warmbier was arrested in January 2016, accused of stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor.
“We are happy for the hostages and their families,” the Warmbiers said in a statement Wednesday. “We miss Otto.”