NK talks ‘moving fast’, US says
Reports of ‘historic’ meet stun the crowds
SINGAPORE: US President Donald Trump plans to depart early from his unprecedented summit with Kim Jong-un, the White House said yesterday, declaring that nuclear talks with North Korea have moved “more quickly than expected”.
Mr Trump had been scheduled to fly back to Washington tomorrow morning after spending today with the North Korean leader in Singapore. But on the eve of the summit, he altered his schedule, opting to return at about 8pm today after a full day of meetings with Mr Kim — almost 15 hours earlier than previously anticipated.
“The discussions between the United States and North Korea are ongoing and have moved more quickly than expected,” the White House said in a statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear what specific progress, if any, had been made in preliminary discussions between US and North Korean officials in the run-up to today’s summit. In fact, only hours before the White House announcement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had seemed to lower expectations for the meeting, which Mr Trump had earlier predicted could potentially yield an on-the-spot deal to end the Korean War.
“We are hopeful this summit will have set the conditions for future successful talks,” Mr Pompeo said yesterday evening.
The summit — the first ever between a sitting American president and North Korea’s leader — was to kick off at 9am (8am Thailand time), the White House said. After greeting each other, the two leaders planned to sit for a one-on-one meeting that a US official said could last up to two hours, with only translators joining them.
The White House said the daylong summit would also include a working lunch and a larger meeting involving aides to both leaders. On the US side, Mr Trump was to be joined by Mr Pompeo, chief of staff John Kelly, national security adviser John Bolton and US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim.
Before flying home, Mr Trump planned to speak to reporters in Singapore after concluding the summit, the White House said.
The last-minute schedule change came as both sides finalised preparations. Mr Trump yesterday forecast a “nice” outcome, while Mr Kim spent the day out of view.
Mr Trump talked with South Korean President Moon Jae-in about his upcoming summit with Mr Kim yesterday and expressed optimism for a diplomatic breakthrough.
The Blue House said Mr Moon told him South Koreans will be praying for a “miraculous result”.
PYONGYANG: North Koreans got their first big dose of news yesterday that their leader Kim Jong-un had arrived in Singapore for what even the state-run media was calling a historic meeting with US President Donald Trump.
The news covered the front page of the ruling party’s newspaper and was the top — and only — item on the first news broadcast of the day on Korean Central Television, which for many North Koreans is the only channel available.
People crowded around poster stands at subway stations around the capital to read the news and gathered at noon in front of the city’s main train station to watch a big screen display of images of Mr Kim getting off the special Air China flight that took him to Singapore.
A report by the Korea Central News Agency said the summit would have “wide-ranging and profound talks” and noted that it is being held “under the great attention and expectation of the whole world”.
The relative speed with which the state media got the news of Mr Kim’s arrival in Singapore out to the North Korean public suggests a certain level of confidence that the meeting will go well — or at least well enough. For the North, Mr Kim has already won a huge propaganda bonus by merely having the summit and sitting down as an equal with the US president, an accomplishment his father and grandfather sought but could never realise.
By prominently showing the Air China jet that flew Mr Kim to Singapore, the reports also made no secret of China’s important role behind the scenes. That might not bode so well for Mr Trump, who has expressed some concern about China’s influence.
Even so, the summit continues to be a highly sensitive topic in North Korea and it is difficult — even more so than usual — to get people to express their opinions about it. The media reports follow months of only the scantest of coverage of the plans for Mr Kim to meet Mr Trump, though his summits with South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and China’s President Xi Jinping received major coverage soon after they had ended.
“When I woke up this morning I saw the news in the newspaper that our respected Marshal went to Singapore for the North Korea-US summit,” said Han Il-gwang, a Pyongyang resident, displaying typical discretion when speaking to an AP television crew. “I know that Singapore is a very hot country so I wish that our respected Marshal stays healthy and comes back in good health.’’
Such characteristic caution when speaking in public notwithstanding, there is no doubt the prospect of the summit is generating interest, and astonishment, among average North Koreans.
North Korea has so far presented Mr Kim’s sudden diplomatic overtures to his neighbors and to the United States as a logical next step following what Mr Kim has claimed is the completion of his plan to develop a credible nuclear deterrent to what Pyongyang has long claimed is a policy of hostility and “nuclear blackmail” by Washington.
Those points were echoed in yesterday’s media coverage, which stressed that the talks with Mr Trump would be focused on forging a relationship that is more in tune with what it called changing times — most likely meaning the North’s new status as a nuclear weapons state — its desire for a mechanism to ensure a lasting a durable peace on the Korean Peninsula and, finally, denuclearisation.
What exactly it has in mind for any of those broad topics remains to be seen.