Trump says he could meet North Korea’s Kim at DMZ
OSAKA, Japan (AP) — Eyeing a history-making photo opportunity,
President Donald Trump on Saturday issued a Twitter invitation to North
Korea’s Kim Jong Un to join him for a hand shake during a visit by Trump
to the demilitarized zone with South Korea.
The invitation, while
long rumored in diplomatic circles, still struck as an impulsive
display of showmanship by a president bent on obtaining a
legacy-defining nuclear accord. Presidential visits to the DMZ are
traditionally treated as carefully guarded secrets for security reasons,
for one. And White House officials couldn’t immediately say whether Kim
had agreed to meet with Trump. The president himself claimed he wasn’t
even sure Kim was in North Korea to accept the invitation.
“All I
did is put out a feeler, if you’d like to meet,” Trump said later of the
message to Kim. He added, somewhat implausibly, that “I just thought of
it this morning.”
Trump is scheduled to fly to South Korea later
Saturday after he concludes meetings at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka,
Japan, including with the president of China. He told reporters during a
breakfast with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that he
would be visiting the heavily fortified area between the two Koreas.
“We’re going there,” the president said.
Shortly
before the breakfast, Trump tweeted an invitation for Kim to meet him
there. “If Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at
the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!”
It was
not immediately clear what the agenda, if any, would be for the
potential third Trump-Kim meeting. Trump predicted that, “If he’s there
we’ll see each other for two minutes.” Still, such a spectacle would
present a valuable propaganda victory for Kim, who, with his family, has
long been denied the recognition they sought on the international
stage.
Despite Trump’s comments Saturday, he had told The Hill
newspaper in an interview this week that he would be visiting the DMZ
and said “he might” meet with Kim. The paper reported it had withheld
Trump’s comments citing security concerns by the White House.
North
Korea’s state media made no mention Saturday of a possible meeting
between Trump and Kim. South Korea’s presidential office said nothing
has been determined regarding a Trump-Kim meeting and that Seoul wishes
talks between the U.S. and North Korea would resume.
Trump’s
summit with Kim in Vietnam earlier this year collapsed without an
agreement for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. He became the first
sitting U.S. president to meet with the leader of the isolated nation
last year in Singapore, where they signed a broad agreement to bring the
North toward denuclearization.
Substantive talks between the two
nations have largely broken down since then, as the North has balked at
Trump’s insistence that it give up its weapons before it sees relief
from crushing international sanctions.
Still, Trump has sought to
publicly heap praise on Kim, who oversees an authoritarian government,
in hopes of keeping a deal alive, and the two have traded flowery
letters in recent weeks.
Every president since Ronald Reagan has
visited the 1953 armistice line, except for George H.W. Bush, who
visited when he was vice president. The show of bravado and support for
one of America’s closest military allies has evolved over the years to
include binoculars and bomber jackets.
Trump, ever the showman, appears to be looking to one-up his predecessors with a meeting with Kim
As he left the White House for Asia earlier this week, Trump was asked whether he’d meet with Kim while he is in the region.
“I’ll be meeting with a lot of other people … but I may be speaking to him in a different form,” Trump said.
Such
trips to the demilitarized zone, the heavily fortified border between
North and South Korea, are usually undertaken under heavy security and
the utmost secrecy. Trump tried to visit the DMZ when he was in Seoul in
November 2017, but his helicopter was grounded by heavy fog.
Trump
has staked his self-professed deal-making reputation on his
rapprochement with the North and has even turned it into a campaign
rallying cry. Trump has repeatedly alleged that if he lost the 2016
presidential campaign that the U.S. would be “at war” with North Korea
over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, noting that Kim
has largely halted significant testing since their summit last year.
Trump
also suggested Saturday that the North was prepared to turn over
additional unidentified remains of unknown American and allied
service-members. At least six Americans have been identified from 55
boxes of remains delivered by the North last year after Trump’s first
meeting with Kim, but the Defense Department in May announced it was
halting efforts to recover additional remains, citing a lack of
cooperation from North Korea.
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Associated Press writers
Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, and Darlene
Superville in Washington contributed to this report.