SUMMIT
Later, the two men sat next to each other to sign a joint declaration pledging to work toward peace and to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
“We’re ready to write a new chapter between our nations,” Trump said at a news conference later, calling his meeting with Kim “honest, direct and productive.”
“The past does not have to define the future,” he added. “Yesterday’s conflict does not have to be tomorrow’s war. As history has proved over and over, adversaries can become friends.”
Yet despite the bonhomie, the agreement, just over a page long, was perhaps most notable for its lack of details. Kim made no specific commitment to relinquish his nuclear arms and ballistic missiles or a timeline in which he would do so. Rather, he committed solely to abide by a mostly symbolic agreement he had made during a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April.
Other highly sensitive matters, including the North’s brutal human rights abuses and the economic sanctions imposed by the United States, were left unaddressed. Trump said he would keep the sanctions in At a resort in Singapore, President Donald Trump answered questions from the news media for more than an hour after his summit Tuesday with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un. place until the North demonstrated tangible steps toward disarmament.
Asked why his negotiating team had failed to lock down specific promises from Pyongyang, Trump protested: “Because there’s no time. I’m here one day … But the process is now going to take place.”
Trump said aides would begin additional talks soon and said he would potentially invite Kim to the White House and be open to a visit to Pyongyang “at the appropriate time.” Yet he also acknowledged that
disarmament would not come quickly.
“It does take a long time to pull off complete denuclearization,” Trump said. “Scientifically, you have to wait certain periods of time, and a lot of things happen. But despite that, once you start the process, it means it’s pretty much over.”
The result was a nascent diplomatic breakthrough after decades of hostility. Trump grounded his optimism in his own confidence that he can read an adversary and that his gamble of attempting personal rapport
with an autocrat would pay off.
Trump said Kim agreed to shutter a missile-engine testing site and to allow the return of remains of American service members lost in North Korea during the Korean War more than 60 years ago.
Kim, in turn, got at least one major benefit upfront: Trump announced that he will order an end to regular “war games” that the United States conducts with ally South Korea, a reference to annual joint military exercises that are an irritant to North Korea.
Trump called the exercises “very provocative” and “inappropriate” in light of the optimistic opening he sees with North Korea. Ending the exercises also would save “a lot” of money, he said.
Ending the exercises would be a significant political benefit for Kim — and for China, which has long supported such an outcome — but Trump insisted he did not give up leverage.
“I think the meeting was every bit as good for the United States as it was for North Korea,” Trump said.
Pictures of Kim in Singapore were plastered on the news pages of his staterun media back home in North Korea. As Trump and Kim approached one another from opposite wings of a makeshift stage, complete with a red carpet and a row of alternating American and North Korean flags, Kim had established himself as an equal, for one day at least, to the mostpowerful leader on Earth.
Trump bristled when asked if he had offered Kim’s brutal regime, which has sent up to 100,000 North Koreans to hard labor camps, validation on the world stage.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to make the world a safer place,” the president responded. “If I have to say I’m sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim and that’s going to get us to save 30 million lives — could be more than that — I’m willing to sit on the stage.”