US President Donald Trump
said Saturday he was open to meeting Kim Jong Un at the demilitarised zone between
North and South Korea while on a trip to Seoul this weekend.
“After some very important
meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving
Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). 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(?)!,” Trump tweeted from Japan’s Osaka, where he is
attending the G20 summit.
The surprise offer came
amid a recent flurry of diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear programme after a
Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed without an agreement.
After several months of
public silence, an exchange of letters between the leaders appeared to have
thawed the deep-freeze and raised hopes for a third summit meeting after a
historic first tete-a-tete in Singapore on June 12, 2018 and the second in
Hanoi in February.
Trump will be heading to
Seoul immediately after the G20 summit in Osaka, where on Saturday he will hold
a highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a bid to ease
trade tensions between the world’s top two economies.
According to South Korea’s
Unification minister, the two leaders have exchanged a total of 12 letters
since the beginning of last year, with Kim the more assiduous suitor in their
nuclear bromance, penning eight of those.
Last week, Xi visited
Pyongyang for a highly symbolic summit with Kim. Analysts say that diplomatic
breakthroughs often follow on from such meetings.
The Hanoi summit foundered
amid disagreements on what the North would be willing to give up in exchange
for sanctions relief.
The two sides blamed each
other for the breakdown but Washington has said they are prepared to meet the
North Koreans at any time without preconditions to keep diplomacy alive.
Apparently voicing his
frustration at the diplomatic stalemate, Kim fired off several short-range
“projectiles” that Trump shrugged off.
The North last carried out
a missile test in November 2017, before a rapid diplomatic rapprochement saw
tensions ease on the peninsula and produced a series of summits.
The DMZ was witness to
extraordinary scenes during a summit between Kim and South Korean President
Moon Jae-in when the North’s young leader yanked his counterpart across the
border line in an emotional symbol of unity after decades of aggression.
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