Trump-Kim summit 2019: Donald Trump lands in Hanoi, but experts say talks will likely only freeze Pyongyang’s nuclear progress, not dismantle it

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have arrived in Hanoi for a second summit in eight months

The ‘complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation’ that the US previously demanded is looking unlikely, experts say

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US President Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One after arriving at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam on Tuesday for a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:06pm, 26 Feb 2019Updated: 11:54am, 27 Feb 2019

United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrived in Hanoi on Tuesday for a fresh round of denuclearisation talks that analysts say are likely to freeze, rather than fully dismantle, Pyongyang’s decades-old push to become a nuclear power.

Accompanying the two leaders to the meeting will be their top aides – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton on the US side, and nuclear negotiator Kim Yong-chol and the leader’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, for the North Koreans.

Trump and Kim are meeting for their second summit in eight months, after talks in Singapore last June.

Kim Jong-un arrived by train in the morning, while Trump’s Air Force One touched down at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport just past 9pm local time.

After a marathon 65-hour, 4,500km journey from Pyongyang through the eastern seaboard of China, the North Korean leader’s armoured olive-green train pulled into the Vietnamese border station of Dong Dang just after 8.13am local time.