{"id":125576,"date":"2026-08-20T00:39:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/125576\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T00:39:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:39:23","slug":"donald-trump-aims-to-meet-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-later-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/125576\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump aims to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un later this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he plans to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un<\/a> during his upcoming visit to Asia<\/a>, telling reporters at the White House that maintaining a good relationship with Kim was important given North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

Trump then addressed his relationship with the North Korean leader, emphasizing that “the fact that I get along with him is a good thing, because he has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons.”<\/p>\n

Trump also addressed the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, claiming that the United States has “complete control<\/a>” of the waterway.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Monday, Trump said he had received a response from Kim following his attempts to reengage. The Wall Street Journal reported that he has pushed aides to arrange an in-person meeting with Kim as soon as this autumn.<\/p>\n

North Korea’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment on Trump’s latest remarks, but they came just after Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, said she was unaware of any recent communications between the two countries’ leaders.<\/p>\n

\"AA South Korean soldier stands next to a TV broadcasting a news report on a possible summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, October 22, 2025. (credit: KIM HONG-JI\/ REUTERS)<\/p>\n

Kim Yo Jong also said that while the relationship between the leaders of the United States and North Korea was “truly great,” Washington was still carrying out the drills with Seoul and threatening the national security of Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

Trump held an unprecedented series of summits with Kim in 2018 and 2019, but the diplomatic efforts broke down over US demands that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons. Trump has since referred to North Korea repeatedly as a “nuclear power,” although his administration has continued to call for the country’s denuclearization and does not formally recognize it as a nuclear-weapon state.<\/p>\n

Trump aims to revive diplomatic efforts<\/p>\n

Trump<\/a> has sought to revive the diplomatic efforts in his second term.<\/p>\n

“I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he’s going to be fine as long as we have a smart president,” he told reporters on Wednesday during a tour of a helipad he is constructing on the White House’s historic South Lawn.<\/p>\n

“The fact that I get along with him – that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got them.”<\/p>\n

Trump’s citing of a specific number of nuclear weapons held by North Korea was highly unusual.<\/p>\n

No official estimates of North Korea’s nuclear weapons<\/p>\n

The US government does not publicly publish an official estimate of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, although a 2025 report by the Congressional Research Service cited non-governmental experts as estimating that North Korea has produced enough fissile material for up to 90 warheads but may have assembled approximately 50.<\/p>\n

In June, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea has “possibly assembled around 60 warheads, possesses enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more.”<\/p>\n

During Trump’s first term, Kim called Trump a \u201cmentally deranged US dotard\u201d and threatened that he had use of a “nuclear button” on his desk.<\/p>\n

But the two leaders turned that tension into face-to-face meetings, including a brief exchange at the demilitarized zone between the Koreas in which Trump became the first sitting US president to step into North Korean territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he plans to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[74,141,31,34,144,4828,116],"class_list":["post-125576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-donald-trump","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korea-us-relations","tag-nuclear-weapon","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125576","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=125576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}