WHAT HAPPENED AT START OF 2ND U.S.-N. KOREA SUMMIT

Denuclearization and peace on peninsula top two leaders’ agenda.

HANOI, VIETNAM — President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, over dinner Wednesday, opening the second historic summit between the two to discuss steps North Korea should take to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and measures to establish a permanent peace on the divided Korean Peninsula.

“I think your country has tremendous economic potential,” Trump told Kim after the two shook hands. “I think you will have a tremendous future with your country — a great leader. And I look forward to watching it happen and helping it to happen.”

Kim did not address reporters, although he and Trump whispered to each other when they first met. Wearing a black, Asianstyle suit, he sat and smiled as Trump spoke to him. At dinner, he praised Trump for a “courageous decision” to start a dialogue.

The two leaders met at the Metropole hotel in downtown Hanoi, the capital of a country that is undergoing rapid economic growth decades after a Communist army defeated the U.S. military and their South Vietnamese allies. U.S. officials hope firsthand evidence of that economic transformation will help persuade Kim to end his nuclear program and establish robust trade ties with the United States, South Korea and other nations.

U.S. negotiators, including Stephen E. Biegun, the State Department’s special representative for North Korea, arrived in Hanoi several days before Trump to meet with North Korean coun- terparts and lay the groundwork for Thursday’s talks.

The United States hopes to get Kim to agree to meaningful steps toward denuclearization, in contrast to the results of the meeting between the two leaders last June in Singapore. At the end of that meeting, officials issued a vague communiqué that said the countries would work together on four points including toward “complete denuclearization” of the peninsula.