North Korea says Trump’s invitation is a ‘very interesting suggestion’ but says there has been no ‘official proposal’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Donald Trump has said he would have “no problem” stepping into North Korea if he meets the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, for a handshake and to “say hello” on Sunday.

North Korea had earlier described as “very interesting” Trump’s tweeted offer to meet Kim along the heavily armed border of North and South Korea.

“We see it as a very interesting suggestion, but we have not received an official proposal,” North Korea’s KCNA news agency quoted the country’s first vice foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, as saying.

“I am of the view that if the DPRK-US summit meetings take place on the division line, as is intended by President Trump, it would serve as another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations,” Choe said, using the country’s official title Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In a tweet on Saturday morning, Trump, who is attending the G20 summit in the Japanese city of Osaka, proposed that he and Kim leader meet at the demilitarised zone [DMZ] – the border separating the two Koreas – to shake hands and “say hello”.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 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 told reporters: “We’ll be there and I just put out a feeler because I don’t know where he is right now. He may not be in North Korea. If he’s there, we’ll see each other for two minutes, that’s all we can, but that will be fine.”

Trump stepping over the line of demarcation separating North and South Korea would be hugely symbolic, echoing a similar gesture made by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in – with Kim’s encouragement – when they met at the DMZ last year.

“Sure I would, I would. I’d feel very comfortable doing that. I’d have no problem,” Trump told reporters, adding that he believed Kim followed his Twitter account. “I guess he does because we got a call very quickly,” he said.

If Kim accepts the invitation it will be the leaders’ first meeting since their denuclearisation summit in Hanoi in February ended without an agreement.

Some North Korea watchers interpreted Choe’s comments as a sign that the meeting will go ahead. Commenting on the KCNA reports, John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, tweeted: “Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is North Korean for ‘yes’”.

The South’s presidential Blue House said nothing had been confirmed at this point and added: “Our position, which hopes for a dialogue between the US and North Korea to take place, remains unchanged.”

Trump and Kim have met twice, first in Singapore last June and again in Hanoi in February. Neither summit has produced a comprehensive agreement that would see North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief.

But a photo opportunity on the DMZ, no matter how symbolic, is unlikely to go far in resolving their differences on denuclearisation, according to Scott Seaman, director of Eurasia Group Asia.

“For talks to have real legs, either Kim must credibly commit to denuclearisation or Trump must credibly agree to allow Kim to keep some of his nuclear weapons,” Seaman said.

“Without a shared end goal, creating a viable roadmap to reaching it will remain impossible.”

Trump’s first months in office were marked by belligerent, personal attacks between the president and the North Korean leader over North Korea’s nuclear program.

But since the two met in Singapore last June, the US president has touted a close, personal bond with Kim. That meeting marked the first time a sitting American president had met with the North Korean leader.

And when North Korea conducted several weapons tests last month, Trump took up a surprisingly moderate tone. “Nobody’s happy about it,” the president said.

As he enters his re-election campaign, Trump is reliant on at least the appearance of diplomatic progress with North Korea as his principal foreign policy success. He has repeatedly insisted that the two countries were on a collision course to war before he came to office.

He told reporters on Saturday that it was a “good thing” that he and Kim “seem to get along very well”.

“It’s good to get along. Because frankly, if I didn’t become president, we’d be right now in a war with North Korea. You’d be having a war, right now, with North Korea. And by the way, that’s a certainty. That’s not, like, maybe.”

Trump’s desire to avoid bad news from the Korean peninsula has given Kim some leverage in his bid to have sanctions eased. But while Trump has so far ignored large-scale sanctions-busting by North Korea, Russia and China, he has shown himself unwilling to lift any part of the embargo formally.

As he left the White House for Asia earlier this week, Trump was asked whether he’d meet with Kim while he is in the region.

“I’ll be meeting with a lot of other people ... but I may be speaking to him in a different form,” Trump said.

Such trips to the demilitarised zone, the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea, are usually undertaken under heavy security and the utmost secrecy.