US President Donald Trump is open to engaging in renewed talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to achieve denuclearization, the White House said, even as Kim’s sister issued a pointed warning against any pressure to disarm.
“President Trump in his first term held three historic summits with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un that stabilized the Korean Peninsula and achieved the first-ever leader-level agreement on denuclearization,” Fox News Digital quoted a White House official as saying.
“The President retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully de-nuclearized North Korea,” the official as per the report further stated.
Responding to US overtures, Kim Yo Jong — the sister of Kim Jong Un — said relations between Trump and her brother are “not bad.”
However, she warned that any US attempt to force North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal would be met with hostility.
“If the U.S. fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK–U.S. meeting will remain as a ‘hope’ of the U.S. side,” she said in remarks carried by North Korean state media.
She added that efforts to coerce Pyongyang into denuclearizing would be viewed as “nothing but a mockery.”
Trump made diplomatic history during his first term by meeting with Kim Jong Un three times — in Singapore in 2018, Hanoi in 2019, and at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) later that year.
In the 2018 Singapore summit, Trump and Kim signed a joint statement agreeing to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and pledged to establish new US–North Korea relations.
Trump also became the first sitting US president to set foot on North Korean soil during their DMZ meeting.
Despite the early diplomatic breakthroughs, talks eventually fell apart. By 2020, negotiations had completely stalled.
While North Korea had reportedly offered to dismantle parts of its nuclear program, it demanded full sanctions relief in return — a proposal Trump ultimately rejected.
North Korea resumed weapons testing, and the prospect of denuclearization faded as both sides blamed each other for the breakdown.