US President Donald Trump has been reportedly pushing his aides to set up a meeting with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un by the end of the year. <\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump wants to meet North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un by the end of the year, according to The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n
Trump has been pushing his aides to arrange a meeting this fall, preferably during his next visit to Asia in November.<\/p>\n
While the White House did not confirm the Journal’s report and merely said that the two leaders “would meet at an appropriate time”, Trump has previously hinted at ongoing efforts to arrange a meeting. He suggested that the two leaders came close to meeting last year.<\/p>\n
During a tour of Asia last year, Trump tried to meet Kim and asked reporters on Air Force One to “put out the word”. The Journal reported that North Korea had signalled its openness to a meeting, but the logistics were too difficult to organise at short notice.<\/p>\n
But Trump later suggested that he had postponed meeting Kim out of respect for Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a US-North Korea summit could have overshadowed his meeting with Xi. He said that it would have been “maybe disrespectful” to hold the meeting at the time.<\/p>\n
“I’d come back, with respect to Kim Jong Un,” Trump further said at the time.<\/p>\n
Trump pivots to North Korea as Ukraine, West Asia peace efforts remain stalled<\/p>\n
The Journal’s report comes shortly after Trump made a stunning U-turn in US policy towards the Koreas by ordering the Department of Defense to “substantially reduce” US-South Korea military drills after claiming that such activities adversely affected his “very good” relationship with Kim Jong-un.<\/p>\n
Trump said the drills sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile” message to a country that has been completely “unthreatening and respectful” towards him.<\/p>\n
During his first term, the two leaders met three times, but their discussions remained inconclusive as Kim rejected complete denuclearisation and Trump stuck to his maximalist demands. Trump now appears to be reviving the initiative.<\/p>\n
After ordering the downscaling of drills, Trump claimed that Kim had responded to the development. He did not go into the specifics.<\/p>\n
But the chances of an immediate breakthrough are slim as Trump’s efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and the conflicts in West Asia have yielded little so far. Moreover, North Korea has been emboldened by its closer-than-ever ties with Russia and China. It also now has a battle-tested military as tens of thousands of its personnel have fought alongside Russian forces in the war in Ukraine. Kim has also expanded the country’s nuclear arsenal in recent years.<\/p>\n
Independent estimates suggest that North Korea has around 60 nuclear warheads and enough material to produce at least 30 more.<\/p>\n
In April, Assistant Defense Secretary Robert Kadlec told Congress that “North Korea’s nuclear forces are increasingly capable of targeting the US homeland, and its missile forces can strike South Korea and Japan with nuclear or conventional warheads”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump has been reportedly pushing his aides to set up a meeting with North Korean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64350,8399,74,141,31,34,12693,16955,4196],"class_list":["post-124400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-asia-visit","tag-denuclearization","tag-donald-trump","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-trump-kim-jong-un-meeting","tag-us-north-korea-summit","tag-us-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}