President Donald Trump’s recent conciliatory-sounding remarks about North Korea have drawn attention, but what lies behind them? 

Fred Fleitz, Vice President of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a policy body closely tied to the Trump camp, told The Sankei Shimbun that the president hopes to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 

He added that if such a meeting takes place, Trump intends to press Kim directly to resolve the abductions of Japanese nationals. 

Fleitz served as a Deputy Assistant to the president for national security affairs in the first Trump administration and, in the second, has worked as AFPI’s head of foreign policy. 

He spoke with The Sankei Shimbun on August 31, days after Trump scaled back the joint US-South Korea military exercise and began using friendlier language toward Kim.

Denuclearization Goal Unchanged

According to Fleitz, the biggest reason for the shift in tone is that Trump wants a summit with Kim. He said that when Trump wants a one-on-one meeting with a particular foreign leader, he tends to speak positively, even in friendly-sounding terms, about that leader beforehand, as he did with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The push for a meeting with Kim stems mainly from North Korea’s military threat having grown even larger, Fleitz said, citing advances in its nuclear and missile programs. He noted that Trump publicly put an exact figure on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in August because he wanted to underscore the danger.

Yet the underlying US goal hasn’t shifted: “Trump is still pushing North Korea’s total denuclearization, known as CVID [complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization].”

Fleitz pushed back on the idea that the outreach to Pyongyang risks damaging the US-South Korea relationship, stressing that the alliance is not as strained as it is often portrayed and remains essential to deterring North Korea.

Washington had asked Seoul for cooperation in defending the Strait of Hormuz as part of its Iran policy but did not receive direct cooperation, he acknowledged.

Even so, he said, “South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung government has delivered stronger-than-anticipated cooperation on trade and security.” He pointed to a 7.5% rise in South Korea’s 2026 defense budget and an additional $1 billion in support for the 28,500 US troops stationed there.

“Major shipbuilding agreements between the two countries are expected to expand the US Navy’s capacity,” Fleitz said, adding that American firms stand to secure large contracts supporting South Korea’s development of its first nuclear-powered submarines and its civilian nuclear power program. 

Unlike several European allies, he noted, “South Korea did not try to undermine the US war effort in Iran by denying access to critical bases or publicly criticizing Trump’s Iran policy.”

Given that record, Fleitz said, “Mr. Trump should and perhaps will dispatch Secretary of State Marco Rubio to South Korea to promote this matter. He is highly trusted and respected by South Koreans.”

Abductions Issue Not Forgotten

A Trump-Kim meeting itself may not be far off. “Trump is instructing his aides to have a meeting with Kim, potentially on the sidelines of his November trip to Asia for the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China,” Fleitz said, adding that separate action could also be taken purely to bring about a meeting with Kim on its own.

Any such engagement, Fleitz said, will need to be coordinated closely with Tokyo and other regional partners. “As for the meeting with the North Korean leader, the US must coordinate closely with Japan and regional partners,” he said. “South Korea is part of a web of security alliances that President Trump should tap to counter growing threats in the Indo-Pacific from China, Russia, and North Korea.”

The US-South Korea-Japan trilateral partnership, he added, “is a crucial security relationship that will be especially important to any successful Trump-Kim engagement.” But Washington should also consult with other regional players, “including Australia, India, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.”

Trump has raised the issue of North Korea’s abductions of Japanese nationals at every past meeting with Kim, and Fleitz expects no change this time. “I believe Trump is certain to raise the abduction issue if there is a Trump-Kim summit,” he said. “He likes PM [Sanae] Takaichi a lot, and I am sure she will make the case for this, at least in a phone call to Trump.”

“They may have already spoken,” Fleitz added. “It would not be unusual if MOFA set up a call for the PM soon after Trump’s recent posts on North and South Korea.”

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(Read the article in Japanese.)

Author: Yoshihisa Komori, Associate Correspondent in Washington DC for The Sankei Shimbun  

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