U.S. President Donald Trump has said he would be willing to meet with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un during his visit to South Korea for a regional summit next week.
“If you want to put out the word, I'm open to it,” Trump said Friday when asked by reporters aboard Air Force One if he would meet Kim at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.
Speculation has grown that Trump — hungry for a Nobel Peace Prize — could hold impromptu talks with Kim during Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meetings in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 29 and 30. Such a meeting would be similar to his surprise visit to the DMZ in June 2019 following a Group of Seven summit in the city of Osaka.
In that instance, Trump used a social media post to issue a surprise invitation asking Kim “to shake his hand and say Hello” at the DMZ. A meeting was quickly put together in less than 36 hours, with Trump becoming the first sitting U.S. president to set foot into North Korea.
“You know, they don't have a lot of telephone service,” Trump said Friday of North Korea. “They have a lot of nuclear weapons, but not a lot of telephone service.”
But, added Trump: “He knows I'm coming.”
A U.S. official was quoted as saying earlier in the day that Trump has no current plans to meet with Kim, but noted that "things can change."
Trump has met Kim three times, once in Singapore and Vietnam and most recently at the DMZ. But, more than six years since that last meeting, the political landscape has greatly shifted.
The global sanctions apparatus that once isolated Pyongyang is in tatters; the North’s legion of hackers continues to siphon off cash for the regime; and North Korea’s strategic partnership with Russia has helped transform Kim’s military while also providing his country with a lifeline in the form of fuel, food and access to advanced military equipment.
Amid all this, Kim has doubled down on building up his arsenal, developing increasingly sophisticated missiles and weapons systems and pledging that while he is open to meeting, any return to talks with the U.S. would be done on his terms.
“If the United States abandons its delusional obsession with denuclearization and acknowledges reality, seeking genuine peaceful coexistence with us, we have no reason not to meet,” Kim told the country's rubber-stamp parliament last month.
Senior White House officials have said that Trump will continue to pursue the “complete denuclearization of North Korea,” just as he did in his first term. But the tantalizing prospect of talks has already stoked Trump’s interest and could prove irresistible for the headline-hungry U.S. president.
According to Park Hyeong-jung, an emeritus research fellow with the Korea Institute for National Unification think tank, there’s “a real chance” that Trump and Kim might eventually hold a summit. While nuclear issues would likely be the stated focus, both sides may have very different motives.
“For Trump, a summit could dominate global headlines, boost his image and distract from political troubles,” Park wrote in an analysis earlier this year. “If Kim plays along, Trump wins big; if not, there’s little to lose. For Kim, just entertaining the idea of a summit elevates North Korea’s status and reinforces the legitimacy of its nuclear program.
“Even if no summit takes place, the buzz around renewed contact would still benefit both leaders,” he added.
On Friday, Trump signaled that he was even open to recognizing Kim’s key demand for a return to talks: recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power.
"When you say they have to be recognized as a nuclear power — well, they got a lot of nuclear weapons,” Trump said. "I’ll say that.”
North Korea is estimated to have assembled around 50 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. But the reclusive country is also believed to possess enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more warheads and is accelerating the production of further fissile material.
Some experts say recognizing Pyongyang as a nuclear state would disrupt a delicate balance of power in the region — potentially sparking off an arms race that could prompt Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons.
culled from Japan Times
