Trump, Kim to meet in Hanoi
Tweets extol summit, predict economic gains for N. Korea
SEOUL, South Korea — President Donald Trump said Friday that he will hold his second summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Hanoi and predicted that the authoritarian country would someday become “a great Economic Powerhouse” under Kim’s leadership.
In a pair of tweets, Trump praised Kim and said his representatives had just left North Korea after a “productive meeting” on the Feb. 2728 summit.
Trump added, “I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!”
The president had previously announced Vietnam as the summit location, but the city hadn’t been identified. It will be the pair’s second summit — the first was in June in Singapore. Kim pledged then to work toward the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, without providing a clear timetable.
“North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse. He may surprise some but he won’t surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket — an Economic one!” Trump tweeted Friday.
Trump’s tweets came after the top U.S. envoy for North Korea returned Friday to South Korea after three days of talks in Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
Yonhap said Stephen Biegun landed at a U.S. air base in Osan, just south of Seoul. He is expected to brief South Korean officials about his visit to North Korea over the weekend.
Before going to Pyongyang, Biegun was in Seoul for talks with South Korean officials about the next summit between Trump and Kim.
Biegun is thought to have discussed specific disarmament steps that North Korea could promise at the Vietnam summit and what corresponding measures the United States is willing to take.
Experts say Kim is determined to win relief from U.S.-led sanctions to help revive his country’s economy, while Trump, faced with domestic problems such as the Russia investigation, needs foreign-policy achievements.