Trump: ‘New chapter’ with N. Korea begins
End to joint military drills surprises South Korea, Pentagon.
SINGAPORE — In a day that began with a handshake and ended with a freewheeling news conference, President Donald Trump deepened his wager on North Korea’s leader Tuesday, arguing that their blossoming personal relations would bring the swift demise of its nuclear program.
In a historic meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un, Trump also gave him a significant concession: no more military drills between the United States and South Korea, a change that surprised South Korea and the Pentagon.
After hours of face-to-face contact, Trump said he believed Kim’s desire to end his country’s 7-decade-old animus with the United States was sincere.
“My meeting with Chairman Kim was honest, direct and productive,” Trump said. “We got to know each other well in a very confined period of time under very strong, strong circumstances. We’re prepared to start a new
history, and we’re ready to write a new chapter between our nations.” Still, a joint statement signed by the two after their meeting — the first ever between a sitting American president and a North Korean leader — offered few details. It called for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula but provided neither a timeline nor any details about how the North would go about relinquishing its weapons. The statement, which U.S. officials negotiated with the North Koreans and had hoped would be a road map to a nuclear deal, was a page-and-a-half of diplomatic language taken from statements negotiated by Pyongyang over the last two decades. It made no mention of Trump’s long-standing demand that North Korea submit to complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. It made no mention of North Korea’s missiles. It also did not set a firm date for a follow-up meeting, though the president said he would invite Kim to the White House when the time was right. “This is what North Korea has wanted from the beginning, and I cannot believe that our side allowed it,” said Joseph Y. Yun, a former State Department official who has negotiated with the North. “I am quite simply surprised that months of negotiations produced so little.” But if the outcome was short on details, it still helped replace the fears of a nuclear showdown with diplomacy. Trump declared that the meeting was successful because it had reduced tensions. Trump said he had taken Kim’s measure during three hours of meetings and found him genuine in his desire to lead North Korea out of a spiraling confrontation with the United States. The president claimed two immediate results from the summit. He said Kim volun- teered to dismantle a facility that tests engines for ballistic missiles. For his part, the president agreed to halt joint military exercises with South Korea, part of what the South Korean government views as a bulwark of its alliance with the United States. Trump said the exercises — he referred to them as “war games” — were costly and needlessly provocative to Pyongyang. U.S. officials said the vague language in the statement did not mean the United States had softened its denuclearization demand. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to resume negotiations with the North Koreans next week on the details. Appearing to accept the views of his predecessors, as well as most of his own military commanders, Trump said he could not imagine a war in a country where the largest city, Seoul, is only 35 miles from the border where the conflict would likely erupt. For Trump, averting such massive bloodshed justified the risk of meeting with Kim. He bridled at critics who said he had elevated a brutal dictator by agreeing to meet, and had extracted little in return. “If I have to say I’m sitting on a stage with Chairman Kim and that gets us to save 30 million lives — it could be more than that — I’m willing to sit on the stage,” Trump said. “I’m willing to travel to Singapore.”