Trump’s Landmark Meeting with North Korea’s Kim

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang in 2000, and there were talks of a summit between Clinton and then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the father of Kim Jong Un.

Geng further said that efforts on achieving the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula was moving on in the right direction and called for support for relevant countries to focus on resolving Pyongyang’s nuclear programme through dialogue and cooperation, the Yonhap news agency reported. “Meeting being planned!” he wrote.

He said it was the strongest indication to date of Kim’s “not just willingness but really his desire for talks”.

The notoriously reclusive Kim, who rarely receives visitors and is not known to have traveled outside of North Korea since taking power in 2011, has spent the past year ramping up his country’s missile and nuclear weapons development programs, in open defiance of the worldwide community. “Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached”.

“I think that history speaks for itself”, the official said, adding “as President Moon expressed, he believes that we’re at this juncture precisely because of the approach President Trump has taken with maximum pressure”.

November 29: North Korea’s third ICBM test demonstrates a potential range that could reach Washington, D.C.

The thaw came after a period of extreme tension between Washington and Pyongyang that sounded like the growing drumbeat of war. The president often referred to the brutal dictator as “Little Rocket Man”.

Hoare, of The Royal Institute of global affairs, believes North Korea’s isolation could have helped push Kim Jong-un towards Trump.

Ahead of the announcement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged caution about any forthcoming talks, despite what he described as “potentially positive signals coming from North Korea”. “At that point, he will go to the world and say ‘I’m very reasonable”.

It’s not clear. It could be that years of sanctions designed force it to talk are working.

But the prospect of a top-level meeting is a paradigm shift.

By agreeing to the US’s vague condition for talks, the simple consideration of denuclearization, Kim has managed to advance North Korea’s diplomatic agenda tremendously without agreeing to concrete action. In 2006, it made its first nuclear test.

It is a gambit fraught with risk for Trump.

Monday’s talks with Kim were the culmination of a series of North-South contacts since the beginning of the year.

However, Trump’s decision also carries historic echoes of Richard Nixon’s visit to communist China or Barack Obama’s overture to Cuba, both of which offered the hope of better ties.

Chung Eui-yong spoke outside the White House after a day of briefings with senior USA officials, including Trump, on the recent inter-Korea talks. North Korea hours later announces a plan to launch a salvo of missiles toward the USA territory of Guam, a major military hub in the Pacific.

The announcement that President Trump had accepted the invitation came from the South Korean official who led the delegation to Pyongyang this week.

In an evening tweet, Trump praised a possible future agreement with the communist North as “very good” for the worldwide community as a whole, after the United States leader stunned the world by accepting an invitation to meet Kim Jong Un before the end of May.

A big question will be whether Trump can accept a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program rather than its elimination, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University.

The announcement comes as the USA lacks an ambassador in South Korea.

Last November, when asked about his lack of key appointees at the State Department, Trump said, “I’m the only one that matters”.

Trump wants to meet Kim by May, which comes after the restarting of military drills between the United States and South Korea.

For decades, China has been the unconditional North Korean ally and its main diplomatic and economic partner.

Giving up the weapons would be seismic.

Kahl, a former national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, also said that Trump has a reputation for being unprepared, prone to flattery and manipulation by his hosts, and all too willing to throw allies “under the bus”.

“Kim isn’t inviting Trump to relinquish his nuclear weapons”. According to Chung, Kim has offered to put the nuclear and missile programs on the table.