Trump softens rhetoric

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA» Softening his aggressive rhetoric, President Donald Trump stood on South Korean soil Tuesday and urged North Korea to come to the negotiating table. It’s time, he said, for the North to “make a deal” to rein in its nuclear weapons program.

It was a striking shift in tone for the president, who for months has issued increasingly dire threats to answer any hostile North Korean action with “fire and fury.” On Tuesday, his first day on the Korean Peninsula as president, Trump said he had seen “a lot of progress” in dealing with Pyongyang, although he stopped short of saying he wanted direct diplomatic talks.

“It makes sense for North Korea to come to the table and make a deal that is good for the people of North Korea and for the world,” Trump said at a news conference with South Korean president Moon Jae-in. “I do see certain movement.”

Trump closed out his visit to Seoul on Wednesday with an address to South Korea’s National Assembly, where he returned to sharper rhetoric . “Do not underestimate us,” he said. “And do not try us.”

The next stop on his Asian tour: Beijing, where he will press China to constrict the North’s economic lifeblood.

Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director in Washington for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Trump’s shift in rhetoric could simply be him projecting “what he most recently heard” from Moon and Japan’s Shinzo Abe.

There’s no public sign of any diplomatic progress between Washington and Pyongyang. U.S. officials say the back channel between the State Department and the North Korean mission at the United Nations in New York remains intact, but contacts have not been substantive.

Still, Trump’s conciliatory comments would be welcome in South Korea, where both the government and the wider population have been unnerved by the president’s threats against the North.

Trump did note the United States’ military options, mentioning that three aircraft carrier groups and a nuclear submarine had been deployed to the region. But he said “we hope to God we never have to use” the arsenal. And he accused North Korea’s Kim Jong Un of “threatening millions and millions of lives, so needlessly.”

Moon, who has been eager to solidify a friendship with Trump, said he hoped the president’s visit would be a turning point in the standoff with North Korea.