Donald Trump vowed that his second meeting with Kim Jong-un would be at least the equal of the first and his Vietnamese hosts tried their utmost to make that happen.

In Hanoi on Wednesday evening, every effort was made in recreating the circumstances and ambience of Singapore, scene last June of the historic first meeting between an incumbent US president and a North Korea leader.

The backdrop and choreography had been meticulously copied, with the two leaders advancing towards one another in front of a row of alternating US and North Korean flags.

They clasped hands as they met, exchanged inaudible words, smiled and pivoted towards the wall of cameras. Just as they had done last June in Singapore, they then sat alongside each other by a coffee table and praised each other for the benefit of the press.

Trump dubbed Kim, head one of the most murderous regimes of modern times, a “great leader” whose future would have a “tremendous future” with US help.

Kim returned the compliment, crediting the fact that the two men were meeting at all because of Trump’s “courageous decision”. Both men devoted most of their words talking up the significance of Singapore.

‘I think the biggest progress was our relationship, which is really a good one,’ Trump said. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Trump also pointed to the bonhomie between the men as being the principal achievement of Singapore and the eight months since.

“I think the biggest progress was our relationship, which is really a good one,” he said.

Later as they sat down to dine on shrimp cocktail, grilled sirloin and chocolate lava cake, Trump seemed so keen to emphasis their friendship that he kept breaking into Kim’s own attempts to describe their encounter.

Kim: “We had exchanged a very interesting dialogue with each other – ”

Trump: “We did.”

Kim: “ – for about 30 minutes.”

Trump: “Boy, if you could have heard that dialogue, what you would pay for that dialogue? It was good.”

Like most theatrical remakes, the strain involved in trying to keep things the same only served to highlight the small ways things had changed.

While the Singapore meeting in June was played out in bright sunshine, the two leaders arrived at Hanoi’s Metropole hotel after dark, their oversized black limousines pulling up to the entrance before curtains were drawn around them to allow their occupants to emerge in safety.

By the time they met, both men had spent the whole day in Hanoi. Kim seems to have been cloistered in his hotel room. An official photo showed him huddling with advisers around a table with a clipboard and a bowl of sweets.

Trump had crossed town in the late morning to meet the Vietnamese leadership and announce a sale of Boeing airliners, but after lunch he too had retreated to his hotel, where he stewed in all the news from Washington.

His former lawyer, fixer and consigliere, Michael Cohen, had denounced him as a racist cheat and conman in written testimony to Congress.

Trump fired off a stream of angry tweets, though only one of them was directed at Cohen himself, downplaying their ties, and saying he was “one of many lawyers who represented me” adding Cohen “had other clients also”.

At the Singapore summit, Kim arrived at the venue several minutes before Trump, which was interpreted by Korean pundits as a sign of respect from the young leader to the president more than twice his age.

If that was true, there was no such respect this time. Kim’s motorcade pulled up to the Metropole hotel a few minutes after Trump. There were smiles for the cameras but they melted away rapidly. Kim appeared more nervous and sweaty than the first time round.

It was Trump who seemed the most eager to please, leaning forward off his chair into a half-crouch to take Kim’s hand.

In Singapore, in the wake of a thunderous war of words that brought their two countries dangerously close to war, just meeting and shaking hands was enough to notch up a breakthrough for peace, with some justification.

In Hanoi, the pressure is far greater on both leaders to score substantive wins: Kim to win sanctions relief; Trump to achieve some progress on North Korean disarmament.

Reports before the summit suggested that their officials had failed to secure compromises on either of these core issues. It had been left to the two leaders to resolve at their Wednesday night dinner and Thursday’s more structured day of talks to pull something out of the bag.

The White House appeared to be planning on it. After remaining vague on details of the meeting before Wednesday night’s handshake and dinner, late in the evening it published a precise order of play for Thursday, complete with morning meetings, a lunch and then in the afternoon, a “joint agreement signing ceremony” and press conference, all with exact timings.

Whatever accords will be signed then, Wednesday showed that the two leaders already had common ground when it came to the press.

The day after Kim had the US press corps ejected from his hotel to safeguard his privacy, the White House sought to exclude print journalists from the brief “availabilities” at the start of each segment of Wednesday night’s discussions after US reporters had shouted questions to Trump at the initial handshake – some about the president’s domestic political troubles.

After the Singapore meeting he had expressed admiration for the way North Koreans “sit up at attention” when their leader speaks, adding: “I want my people to do the same.”

It is a sentiment that the summit leaders shared with their Vietnamese hosts, who had conducted a crackdown on dissidents before the summit, placing dozens under temporary house arrest.

“All my fellow activists have been under tight surveillance in these days,” said Nguyen Chi Tuyen, an environmental and human rights advocate, who also blogs under the pen name Anh Chi.

He said he had managed to persuade his police watchers to allow him to leave the house if he remained in his neighbourhood.

“I said they have been following me for years. They know me by now,” Nguyen said in a phone interview from his home.

The soft approach, Nguyen said was the smart solution for all concerns. “I get on well with them. They know I am a well-known activist,” he said. “If something happens to me, news can travel around the world really fast.”

Besides, while he wished Trump and Kim all the best in their endeavour, he had no yearning to go into the city centre to witness the meeting.

“What would I want to go to see Trump for?” he asked. “I already follow him on Twitter.”