Trump: S. Korea has his “blessing” in N. Korea deal

President Donald Trump said he’s given South Korea his “blessing” to negotiate a peace deal with North Korea, and that five locations are under consideration for his meeting with the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

“They do have my blessing to discuss the end to the war,” Trump told reporters at the start of a two-day summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the president’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. South Korea never formally ended its war with North Korea, though the armed conflict ended with a cease-fire in 1953.

Trump also suggested he was responsible not only for the negotiations on a formal peace treaty ending the war but also the success of this year’s winter Olympics in South Korea.

“They’ve been very generous that without us and without me in particular, I guess, they wouldn’t be discussing anything and the Olympics would have been a failure,” Trump said. “As you know North Korea participated in the Olympics and it was really quite an Olympics. It was quite a success. That would not have happened.”

Trump said he will meet with Kim in “early June or before that assuming things go well.” If they don’t, the summit with the North Korean leader might not happen, he added.

“It’s possible things won’t go well and we won’t have the meetings and we’ll just continue to go on this very strong path we have taken,” Trump said.

The U.S., Japan and South Korea have forged an alliance to get Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons program. Abe is expected to press Trump during their summit for a sense of what he hopes to accomplish with the meeting, and to underscore what protections Japan is seeking.

“Japan and ourselves are locked and we are very unified on the subject of North Korea,” Trump said.