President Donald Trump said he will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12 in Singapore, locking in a historic summit between the two leaders amid their confrontation over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
Trump heads into the summit hoping to gain an agreement from Kim to give up his nuclear weapons and end North Korea’s ballistic missile program. U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that the regime is on the verge of being able to mount a nuclear strike against the U.S. mainland.
The U.S. has alternated for decades between threats and conciliatory approaches to North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests that have vexed a string of U.S. presidents. The confrontation grew heated last year, with Trump deriding Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and Kim calling the president a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”
Since Trump agreed in March to the summit with Kim, both sides have been warmer in public. The U.S. president has repeatedly expressed optimism about reaching a deal, lauding North Korea for halting nuclear tests and praising Kim last month as “very honorable.
The meeting will be the first between a North Korean leader and a sitting U.S. president, though former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have traveled to North Korea since leaving office to negotiate the release of prisoners and to discuss potential diplomatic talks. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000 to meet with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, who was the North Korean leader then.
The return of prisoners the U.S. has called “hostages” cleared an obstacle to direct talks between Trump and Kim.
Trump thanked Kim for releasing the men. “This is a special night for these three really great people and congratulations on being in this country,” Trump told reporters at the airbase. “The fact that we were able to get them out so soon was really a tribute to a lot of things, including a certain process that’s taking place right now. And that process is very important.”
The three men flew to Washington after their release to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was dispatched to Pyongyang on Tuesday in the hope that Kim would agree to free the detainees and also to advance planning for the summit.
“It’s like a dream. And we are very, very happy,” one of the released detainees, Kim Dong Chul, said through a translator when asked how it felt to be home, according to a transcript released by the White House.
Asked how they were treated by the North Koreans, he said, “We were treated in many different ways. For me, I had to do a lot of labor. But when I got sick, I was also treated by them.”
Source: Bloomberg
