{"id":126596,"date":"2026-08-20T14:49:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/126596\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T14:49:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T14:49:25","slug":"north-korea-coy-as-trump-makes-overtures-to-kim-jong-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/126596\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea coy as Trump makes overtures to Kim Jong Un"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump has been trying to revive dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters<\/p>\n

North Korea has denied communication with U.S. President Donald Trump, despite the President saying he plans to meet with leader Kim Jong Un later this year. <\/p>\n

Kim Yo Jong, Mr. Kim\u2019s sister and close adviser, said Wednesday<\/a> there had not been any recent communication between Pyongyang and Washington, but the relationship between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump was \u201ctruly great.\u201d <\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Mr. Trump ordered the Pentagon to scale down the annual war games with South Korea that have long been a point of contention between the allies and North Korea, and has since waxed lyrical about his relationship with Mr. Kim. <\/p>\n

However, Ms. Kim dismissed the reduction in the size of the South Korean-U.S. Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise as \u201cunworthy of comment\u201d and said it did not change the \u201cprovocative and offensive\u201d nature of the war games. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK has remained unchanged and the U.S. and its followers are now violently conducting hostile military activities against the DPRK even this moment,\u201d Ms. Kim said, using an acronym for the country\u2019s official name, the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea. <\/p>\n

Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim held three historic summits during Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, brokered by then South Korean president Moon Jae-in, bringing the Korean Peninsula closer to a formal peace than it has ever been since a war between North and South Korea ended in a 1953 armistice that has remained the uneasy status quo ever since. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Kim Yo Jong described the relationship between the two leaders as ‘really great.’Jorge Silva\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Facing a stalemate in his war with Iran and unpopular at home, Mr. Trump has been attempting to revive a dialogue with Pyongyang that won him praise internationally. <\/p>\n

\u201cI know Kim Jong Un very well, and he\u2019s going to be fine as long as we have a smart president,\u201d he said Wednesday. \u201cThe fact that I get along with him \u2013 that\u2019s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons.\u201d <\/p>\n

Where Mr. Trump got that number from is unclear. It\u2019s unusual for U.S. officials to give a specific size for North Korea\u2019s nuclear arsenal, which has been built up over years of failed denuclearization talks with successive U.S. presidents, and Mr. Trump\u2019s figure would be near the lower end of most assessments. <\/p>\n

Speaking to South Korean lawmakers Thursday, the country\u2019s defence minister, Ahn Gyu-back, said Seoul believes Pyongyang has between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads. <\/p>\n

He declined to answer any questions about whether Seoul was aware of or involved in behind-the-scenes discussions between the U.S. and North Korea, but said North Korea\u2019s response seemed to suggest there was interest in Pyongyang in a potential meeting. <\/p>\n

One opportunity for such a meeting could be in November, when Mr. Trump is expected to visit China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen. While North Korea is not a member of APEC, that the meeting is being hosted by an ally could provide a good opportunity for Mr. Kim to travel to southern China. <\/p>\n

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Thursday that Beijing \u201cdoesn\u2019t have information\u201d on a potential meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is currently in Seoul, said any meeting was a matter for Pyongyang and Washington, but urged the U.S. to \u201cchange its long-standing hostile policy toward North Korea.\u201d <\/p>\n

While Mr. Trump\u2019s sudden decision to downsize Ulchi Freedom Shield took some in South Korea by alarm<\/a> \u2013 particularly as he directly tied it to the country\u2019s lack of support for his war in Iran and continuing trade disputes \u2013 attempts at rapprochement on the Peninsula would be welcomed by current President Lee Jae\u200b-myung, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of former leader Mr. Moon. <\/p>\n

Relations between the two Koreas are at their lowest in decades, after an intensely hostile policy pursued by Mr. Lee\u2019s predecessor, conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, who used the threat of North Korean infiltration to stage an abortive coup that ultimately resulted in his impeachment and imprisonment. <\/p>\n

In 2024, Mr. Kim declared the South was now his country\u2019s \u201cprimary foe\u201d<\/a> and officially abandoned the goal of unification, though he did not rule out a potential second invasion of the South by the North. <\/p>\n

Mr. Lee\u2019s administration has attempted to improve ties, though without much positive response from Pyongyang. Last month, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Seoul was dropping its long-standing demand of \u201cdenuclearization first\u201d when it comes to talks, focusing instead on \u201cpeace first.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe ultimate goal of denuclearization has not been abandoned, but denuclearization first has,\u201d Mr. Chung said. The stance is similar to that adopted by Mr. Trump in his first term. Analysts and peace activists have long argued that expecting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons was a non-starter and an insistence on denuclearization above all else has only prolonged hostilities on the Peninsula. <\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica\u2019s maximalist negotiating position \u2013 that the North rapidly denuclearize \u2013 foreclosed progress on other goals, such as pausing North Korea\u2019s missile-testing program, capping its stockpile of warheads and missiles, freezing its production of fissile material, or establishing a more regularized US-DPRK diplomatic relationship,\u201d Evan Sankey, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote Wednesday<\/a>. \u201cThe U.S. should use a new negotiating push to make progress on what is possible.\u201d <\/p>\n

With files from Alexandra Li in Beijing and Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: U.S. President Donald Trump has been trying to revive dialogue with North Korean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18487,18478,18488,1523,18470,18489,363,18469,18483,18484,18480,18471,18468,119,12048,77,18482,18476,18498,18472,18473,9581,31,18479,2659,1175,18490,18475,18493,18494,34,18496,8374,18495,4262,18492,18474,17865,18486,414,18485,18491,18477,1013,4714,18481,17057,76,18497],"class_list":["post-126596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-korea","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-north-korea","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126596","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=126596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}