Donald Trump says second summit with Kim Jong-un will happen ‘quite soon’ as Moon Jae-in relays Kim’s vow to remove nuclear weapons
Scepticism remains about whether Kim has taken any concrete steps on denuclearisation but that seems unlikely to deter Trump from pushing toward a follow-up to the Singapore summit in June
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that a second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is likely to take place “quite soon” and to follow a similar format to the Singapore summit, albeit in a different location.
Trump told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York that America’s relationship with the country – whose leader he belittled in his debut address to the UN General Assembly last year as “Little Rocket Man” – has improved significantly.
Kim had responded to Trump’s insult by calling the US president “mentally deranged”.
“It was a different world,” the US president was quoted on Monday by AFP. “That was a dangerous time. This is one year later, a much different time.”
Ahead of Trump’s address to the UN General Assembly this week, one of the most closely watched parleys on Monday was Trump’s meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, that briefed Trump on the results of last week’s inter-Korean summit between Moon and Kim in Pyongyang.
Through a translator, Moon told his US counterpart that he brought a message from Kim: a commitment by the North Korean leader to remove nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula, and an assurance that Kim is genuinely looking to take action to relinquish the hermit state’s nuclear programme.