Trump says he will meet with North Korea’s Kim
President Donald Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for talks, an extraordinary development after months of heightened nuclear tension during which the two leaders exchanged frequent military threats and insults.
Kim also has committed to stopping nuclear and missile testing, even during joint military drills in South Korea next month, Chung Eui-yong, the South Korean national security adviser, told reporters at the White House on Thursday night after briefing the president on his four-hour dinner meeting with Kim in Pyongyang on Monday.
After a year in which North Korea fired intercontinental missiles capable of reaching all of the United States and tested what is widely thought to have been a hydrogen bomb, such a moratorium would be welcomed by the United States and the world.
Trump and Kim have spent the past year making belligerent statements about each other, with Trump mocking Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and pledging to “totally destroy” North Korea and Kim calling the American president a “dotard” and a “lunatic” and threatening to send nuclear bombs to Washington, D.C.
But Kim has “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” Chung told reporters.
“President Trump said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May,” Chung said, but he did not provide any information on where the meeting would be. In Seoul, the presidential Blue House clarified that the meeting would occur by the end of May.
The White House confirmed that Trump had accepted Kim’s invitation to meet, which came as a message from Chung rather than in a letter from Kim.
“President Trump greatly appreciates the nice words of the South Korean delegation and President Moon. He will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain.”
Trump took to Twitter on Thursday night to laud the announcement. “Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!” he wrote.
Any meeting between Trump and Kim would be historic — there has never been a face-to-face negotiation, or even a phone call, between the sitting leaders of North Korea and the United States. Former president Jimmy Carter met Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung, and former president Bill Clinton met his father, Kim Jong Il — during visits to Pyongyang after they had left office.