President Donald Trump await the arrival of South Korean President Moon Jae-in to the White House on June 30, 2017. | AP Photo Trump: We have 'many options' on North Korea

President Donald Trump said Friday that he and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea are “in the process of discussing our many options” to deal with North Korea.

Moon is in Washington to meet with Trump, whose administration has described addressing the nuclear threat from North Korea as one of its priorities.


Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he and Moon “accomplished a lot having to do with our thoughts on North Korea and our thoughts on trade” over a “fantastic” dinner at the White House on Thursday.

In a statement delivered alongside Moon in the Rose Garden later Friday, Trump called North Korea a “reckless and brutal regime” whose nuclear and ballistic missile programs “require a determined response.”

“The North Korean dictatorship has no regard for the safety and security of its people or its neighbors and has no respect for human life. And that’s been proven, over and over again,” Trump said, invoking the death of former University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, who returned to the U.S. this month in a coma after spending more than a year in captivity in North Korea.

“The year of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed,” Trump declared. “Many years, and it’s failed. And frankly, that patience is over.”



The president said earlier Friday that the U.S. and South Korea are in the process of renegotiating a trade deal with the country that Trump described as a “rough deal for the United States.”

“It’s been a rough deal for the United States, but I think that it will be much different for the United States,” Trump said. “We are in the process of doing that.”

“We are also in the process of discussing our many options,” he added. “We have many options with respect to North Korea.”

“It was a great opportunity for us to further the trust and friendship between me and President Trump,” Moon told reporters in brief remarks through a translator. “It was also an opportunity to reconfirm that the United States and Korea are walking together on the same path toward a great alliance.”

Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report.