U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a weekend meeting with Kim Jong-un at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea on Saturday, an encounter North Korea said would be meaningful in advancing relations if it goes ahead.
If Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim do meet, it will be for the third time in just over a year, and four months since their second summit broke down with no progress on U.S. efforts to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korea said a weekend meeting between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump, who is scheduled to return to Washington on Sunday, would be “meaningful”, although it had not had an official proposal.
Mr. Trump made the offer to meet Mr. Kim in a comment on Twitter about his trip to South Korea, where he landed on Saturday after wrapping up the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
“While 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(?)!” Mr. Trump said, later telling reporters his offer was a spur-of-the-moment idea: “I just thought of it this morning.”
“If he's there, we’ll see each other for two minutes, that’s all we can, but that will be fine,” he said, adding he and Mr. Kim “get along very well”.
About five hours after Mr. Trump’s offer, a senior North Korean official said a summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim in the DMZ would be “meaningful” in advancing relations.
“We see it as a very interesting suggestion, but we have not received an official proposal,” Choe Son Hui, North Korea's first Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement, state news agency KCNA said.
“If the DPRK-U.S. summit meetings take place on the division line, as is intended by President Trump, it would serve as another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations,” Ms. Choe said.
Later, Mr. Trump told a news conference: “We may be meeting with Chairman Kim ... Kim Jong-un was very receptive.”
He added: “We won’t call it a summit. We’ll call it a handshake,” and said he would be very comfortable stepping over the border into North Korea if he met Mr. Kim at the DMZ.
“We’re working things out right now,” Mr. Trump said after his arrival in Seoul, when asked whether there will be a three-way meeting with Mr. Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday. “Were going to see.”
U.S. special envoy Stephen Biegun said on Friday the United States was ready to hold constructive talks with North Korea to follow through on a denuclearisation agreement reached by the two countries last year, South Korea's foreign ministry said.
U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun attends a meeting with South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon at the Unification Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday. North Korea said Thursday it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the United States first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat.
Mr. Biegun told his South Korean counterpart, Lee Do-hoon, that Washington wanted to make “simultaneous, parallel” progress on the agreement reached at a summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim in Singapore in June last year, the Ministry said in a statement.
Both sides had agreed to establish new relations and work towards denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but talks stalled in February as the two sides failed to narrow differences between U.S. calls for denuclearisation and North Korean demands for sanctions relief.
But negotiations have stalled since a second summit in Vietnam in February collapsed as the two sides failed to narrow differences between U.S. calls for denuclearisation and North Korean demands for sanctions relief.
South Korea's presidential office said nothing was confirmed with regards to a Mr. Trump, Mr. Kim meeting.
“Nothing is fixed at the moment, and our previous position of hoping for dialogue between North Korea and the United States remains unchanged,” the office said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit that Mr. Kim had told him in April security guarantees were key, and that corresponding measures were needed to realise denuclearisation, according to South Korea's presidential office on Saturday.
North Korea's nominal head of state Choe Ryong Hae said in a speech praising Mr. Kim's achievements on Friday that his “strategic decision and proactive external activities” brought about “the great June 12 event”, or the Singapore summit with Mr. Trump, and “re-establish(ed) the relations between the DPRK and big powers”, North Korea's state media KCNA on Saturday.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is North Korea's official name.
“The DPRK government will ... work hard to develop the ties of friendship and cooperation with all the countries that respect the DPRK's sovereignty and are friendly to it,” Choe said, according to KCNA.
Birthday card
In an interview with The Hill, Mr. Trump described his offer to Mr. Kim for a meeting as a spur-of-the-moment idea that occurred to him on Friday.
I just thought of it this morning,” he said.
Mr. Trump wanted to visit the DMZ on a 2017 visit to South Korea but he was forced to put off the plan because of bad weather.
Mr. Trump said before departing for the G20 Osaka Summit that he did not expect to meet Mr. Kim during his trip.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that a recent exchange of letters between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim boosted hopes for a restart of talks, calling it a “very real possibility.”
Mr. Trump told reporters on Saturday Mr. Kim had sent him a birthday card and Mr. Trump sent him a letter in return.
North Korea's official KCNA news agency said Mr. Trump's letter had “excellent content” and Mr. Kim would “seriously contemplate” it, without elaborating.
Mr. Trump has previously said publicly he had received a very warm “beautiful letter” from Mr. Kim. He has not divulged its contents, but the White House official, who did not want to be identified, described the letter as “very flowery.”
“President Trump made his pitch for a short summit with Chairman Kim on Twitter as White House officials most likely have tried -- and failed -- to set up such a meeting through official diplomatic or South Korean channels,” Harry J. Kazianis of the Center for the National Interest said.
If the meeting happens, “while no major agreements will be signed, both sides can reaffirm their commitment to dialogue and diplomacy, essentially resetting the table for a future deal in the weeks and months to come,” Kazianis added.
But others were more sceptical.
“The fundamental problem - no working-level meetings and no basic change in at least the US negotiating position - means that any meeting right now is just pointless theatre,” Vipin Narang, associate professor of political science at MIT, on Twitter.
