N. Korea calls Trump’s DMZ offer ‘interesting’
President extends invitation to Kim to meet at border
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday that President Donald Trump’s offer to meet leader Kim Jong Un at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone is a “very interesting suggestion,” brightening prospects for a third face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.
The North’s First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said the meeting, if realized, Sunday would serve as “another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations.”
Choe still said that North Korea hasn’t received an official proposal for the DMZ meeting from the United States. Her comments suggested that North Korea is willing to accept Trump’s idea — announced earlier in the day on Twitter in Japan — if it gets a formal U.S. offer for the meeting, according to some observers in Seoul.
“They replied very quickly,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, an analyst with NK Pro. “Receiving a formal request from the U.S. president would give Kim Jong Un the grounds at home to meet with Trump.”
Choe’s statement was carried via the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“If he’s there, we’ll see each other for two minutes,” Trump said in Osaka, Japan, hours before his planned departure for Seoul to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “That’s all we can, but that will be fine.”
The meeting would be heavy with symbolism for two countries locked in hostility since the Korean War started almost 70 years ago. If Trump stepped into North Korea, as Moon did during a similar rendezvous with Kim last year, he would become the first sitting U.S. president to do so.
Trump flew to Seoul from Osaka, where he attended a global summit and held numerous meetings with world leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
In South Korea, Trump was welcomed by Moon — and EXO, one of the country’s biggest K-pop boy bands.
Trump met Moon at the Blue House, where the South Korean leader has his offices and home.
Members of EXO gave Trump what was reported to be a signed copy of their latest album and chatted with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Moon agreed that Trump’s possible meeting with Kim would be a “good thing,” according to a South Korean presidential official, Yoon Do-han, who spoke to reporters in Seoul after the two presidents had dinner.
Yoon said Moon talked about Kim’s commitment to denuclearization, while Trump expressed his “amicable” views on Kim.
Yoon said a Trump-Kim meeting, if it comes off, would help pave the way for the resumption of nuclear diplomacy.
Earlier Saturday, Trump invited Kim to shake hands during his planned visit to the DMZ, the de facto border between the Koreas since the armistice that halted the Korean War.
Trump tweeted that “If Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/ DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”
“All I did is put out a feeler if you’d like to meet,” Trump said later of the invitation, adding that he’s not sure of Kim’s whereabouts.
Trump and Kim have met twice since Kim entered talks with the United States early last year to deal away his advancing nuclear arsenal in return for political and economic benefits.
Their first summit in Singapore in June last year ended with Kim’s promise to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But it lacked any timetable and road map.
In Singapore, the two leaders also agreed to improve bilateral relations and build lasting peace on the peninsula.
They met again in Vietnam in February, but that summit collapsed amid disputes over how much sanctions relief North Korea should win in return for dismantling its main nuclear complex — a limited denuclearization step.
Kim has since asked Trump to work out acceptable proposals to salvage the negotiations by year’s end. U.S. officials said sanctions would stay in place until North Korea takes firmer steps toward nuclear disarmament.
Talks of a revival of diplomacy have flared again since Kim and Trump recently exchanged personal letters. Kim called Trump’s letter “excellent” while Trump described Kim’s as “beautiful.”
The U.S. and North Korea are in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Nearly 30,000 U.S. soldiers are deployed in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea.