President Trump said Tuesday that his administration has begun communicating with North Korean officials “at very high levels."

“We’ve also started talking to North Korea directly,” Trump said said to reporters Tuesday during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels with North Korea.”

The comments come after it was revealed last month that Trump was planning to accept a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss denuclearization.

Trump said that a site for the discussions with North Korea have not been determined yet, but that there are five possible locations in the running and that reporters would be notified about the location soon.

But Trump also left the door open that the meetings might not happen.

"It's possible things won't go well, and we won't have the meetings, and we'll just continue to go along this very strong path that we've taken, but we will see what happens,” Trump said.

Abe praised Trump for his leadership and noted that Trump has exerted “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang, which he attributed to opening the door to the direct discussions.

The Trump administration has sought to pressure North Korea by executing international sanctions designed to burden North Korea’s economy.

The most recent sanctions were approved by the United Nations Security Council in December following a missile test from Pyongyang. The sanctions were designed to cut North Korea’s oil imports, require North Koreans working overseas to return to North Korea within 24 months to deprive the nation of foreign currency, and crack down on North Korea’s exports.

Following the announcement of the meeting in March, Trump touted “great progress” on Twitter and said that the Pyongyang would not be launching missile tests in the interim. He also noted that sanctions would remain intact “until an agreement is reached.”

