This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump has called potential talks between North and South Korea “a good thing” and the South Korean presidency said he had agreed there would be no military drills with South Korea during next month’s Winter Olympics.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said Trump told South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, in a telephone call that he hoped inter-Korean talks would lead to good results and that he would send a high-level delegation, including members of his family, to the Winter Olympics, which will be held in South Korea.

In a tweet ahead of the South Korean statement, Trump hailed potential talks between North Korea and South Korea as “a good thing” and took credit for any dialogue after Seoul and Pyongyang this week signalled willingness to speak.





Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) With all of the failed “experts” weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasn’t firm, strong and willing to commit our total “might” against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!

Asked about the suspension in drills, a Pentagon spokesman, Col Rob Manning, said: “The Department of Defense supports the president’s decision and what is in the best interest of the [South Korea]-US alliance.”

North Korea has long denounced US-South Korean joint military exercises as preludes to invasion.

Play Video 1:08 South Korea offers to hold talks with North – video

US officials had earlier responded coolly to North Korea’s suggestion of talks with the state department, saying Pyongyang “might be trying to drive a wedge” between Washington and Seoul.



And the head of US forces in South Korea warned on Thursday against raising hopes over North Korea’s peace overture amid a war of words over its development of nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States.

Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, have exchanged a series of bellicose comments in recent months, raising alarm across the world, with Trump at times dismissing the prospect of a diplomatic solution to a crisis in which both sides have threatened to destroy each other.

In a New Year address, the North Korean leader said he was open to dialogue with the US ally South Korea and could send a delegation to the Winter Olympics.

But Kim also warned that the entire United States was in range of North Korean nuclear missiles and a nuclear button was always on his desk.

Trump responded by mocking Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and saying that his nuclear button was bigger and more powerful and worked.

Seoul answered the North Korean talks overture by proposing high-level talks at a border village next week, and on Wednesday the two Koreas reopened a border hotline that had been closed since February 2016.

The commander of US Forces Korea (USFK), Gen Vincent Brooks, said the overture was a strategy to divide five countries – the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia – to reach North Korea’s goal of being accepted as a “nuclear-capable” nation, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

“We must keep our expectations at the appropriate level,” he was quoted as saying in an address to a university in Seoul.

North Korea reopens hotline with South hours after Trump button boast Read more

North Korea says its weapons are necessary to counter US aggression. The United States stations 28,500 troops in the South, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war.

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzō Abe, said on Thursday the security crisis posed by North Korea to Japan was the most perilous since the second world war and he vowed to bolster defences.

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said Washington would not take any talks between North and South Korea seriously if they did not contribute to denuclearizing North Korea.

She also said Washington was hearing reports that Pyongyang might be preparing to fire another missile and warned of even tougher steps in response if it did so.