Donald Trump has said he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again while speaking at the White House, during talks with the new South Korean president Lee Jae Myung.
Mr Trump told reporters: “I’d like to meet him this year… I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future. I’d like to have a meeting. I got along great with him,” President Trump said, adding they “became very friendly” during his first term in office. “We think we can do something in that regard,” he said, adding that he would like to help the relationship between the two Koreas. Mr Trump and Mr Kim held three meetings between 2018 and 2019 during Mr Trump’s first term and exchanged several letters, which the president called “beautiful” letters, according to Sky News.
Trump and Lee held their first meeting in tense circumstances. Trump lodged vague complaints about a “Purge or Revolution” in South Korea on social media before later walking those back as a likely “misunderstanding” between the allies, Reuters reported. North Korea’s rhetoric has ramped up, with Kim pledging to speed his nuclear program and condemning joint US-South Korea military drills. Over the weekend, Kim supervised the test firing of new air defence systems, the Guardian reported.
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Kim has ignored Trump
Since Trump’s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump’s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea’s nuclear program. In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and a May visit from Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president.
As the leaders met, the liberal South Koreans encouraged Trump to engage with North Korea. “I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong-un, build a Trump World [real-estate complex] in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,” Lee said, speaking in Korean.
Money-making machine
“When you were in office in your first term, the situation on the Korean Peninsula was stable, but during the short hiatus when you were out of office, North Korea developed further its nuclear missile capabilities, and that led to a deterioration of the situation,” Lee told Trump, according to the Washington Examiner.
South Korea’s economy relies heavily on the U.S., with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a “money machine” that takes advantage of American military protection.
