North Korea: Trump says summit with Kim is back on

After a rare meeting with a high-ranking North Korean official, President Trump said Friday he has rescheduled a June 12 summit in Singapore with Kim Jong Un as part of a long-term effort to try and end the latter’s nuclear weapons programs.

While Trump hailed the June 12 meeting in Singapore as a positive step forward, little more than a week after he canceled it over a public tiff with Kim, the president also played down expectations.

“I’ve never said it happens in one meeting”, he added. However, only one nation has actually developed and then given up nuclear weapons: South Africa, which announced in 1993 that it had chose to dismantle its small arsenal four years earlier. Years of – really – hatred, between so many different nations.

“I think it’s going to be a process”, Trump said.

Kim Yong-chol is a close aide of Kim Jong-un and is vice chairman of the ruling Workers Party’s central committee.

“It was a very interesting letter”, he said. “You see what that’s doing to Iran”, he said.

-North Korea summit is back on track, President Donald Trump announced Friday, ending weeks of uncertainty about his historic meeting with Kim Jong Un to discuss ending the North Korean leader’s nuclear program.

As expected, Kim Yong Chol handed Trump a letter from Kim that may clear up some of the questions. But since then, there’s been a flurry of diplomatic activity as officials worked to revive the meeting.

The photo made rounds on social media, where theories abound about why Kim would have sent Trump what seemed like a comically oversized letter.

Washington wants North Korea to quickly give up all its nuclear weapons in a verifiable way in return for sanctions and economic relief.

North Korea has developed nuclear devices as well as missiles capable of reaching the United States mainland heightening the risks for Washington.

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A man watches President Trump and Kim Jong Un on a broadcast at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea.

Last month, South Korean President Moon Jae-in dismissed claims that United States troops stationed in the country – based on Seoul’s alliance with Washington – would have to leave if a peace treaty was signed with the North.

Trump said that if the nuclear issue is resolved, he expected South Korea, Japan and China to provide aid to North Korea, without any cost to the USA for rebuilding it. He departed for the mountainside presidential retreat Friday afternoon with his children Donald Jr., Tiffany and Ivanka, along with Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner.

Trump says his June 12 meeting will be “a beginning”.

Since that short-lived crisis, diplomats in both countries have conducted an intense flurry of negotiations, culminating on Thursday when Pompeo sat down in NY with Kim’s envoy. And he’s on the line now.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning.

But he wound up staying for well over an hour.

Trump also described the widely anticipated summit as a “get-to-know-you” situation, saying that it “will be a process” and he believed the DPRK “wants to do the denuclearization”.

Kim’s to letter to Moon was personally delivered by Kim’s sister, who attended the Olympics as a special envoy, and was covered by a blue folder emblazoned with a golden seal. But he says he won’t impose them “until the talks break down”. And I told them today, “Take your time”.

“It’s absolutely obvious that when a conversation starts about solving the nuclear problem and other problems of the Korean Peninsula, we proceed from the fact that the decision can’t be complete while sanctions are still in place”, he said. We think it’s important.

It has been a topsy-turvy week on the Korean Peninsula thanks to the on-again, off-again historic summit between the U.S. president and North Korean leader. Instead he’s just talking about getting the ball rolling in that direction. They didn’t show up for a preparatory meeting.

South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon persuaded Ri to keep the discussions behind closed-doors for the sake of efficiency. That from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The recently-appointed secretary of state called his South Korean and Singaporean counterparts over the weekend, and Japan is also keenly watching summit preparations. He said he was hopeful an unprecedented meeting with leader Kim would take place as scheduled but left open the possibility talks would fall through. But, you know, I think the Chinese do want this negotiation to succeed. That’s the reason they have the nuclear weapons.

South Korean conservatives advocate a tough approach toward North Korea through sanctions and pressure. “We talked about sanctions”, Trump added.

The senior officials from the two sides agreed to establish a liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and hold military and Red Cross talks later this month on reducing tensions and resuming reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

“It’s in their neighborhood”, he said. Scott, thanks so much for being with us.

KELLY: That’s NPR’s Scott Horsley.