With threats and accusations, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had currently called off the first-ever summit with the sitting US President Donald Trump.
So will the summit take place or not?
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that his historic summit with Kim Jong-un “may not work out” even as he asserted that the North Korean leader was “serious” about denuclearization. Trump met his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the White House on Tuesday as the fate of the much-awaited June 12 Singapore summit between him and Kim loomed largely.
As he welcomed Moon in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that it will be great if his meeting with Kim occurred as scheduled, but if it did not, it will take place later. “We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens,” Trump said in response to a question. “There’s a very substantial chance that it won’t work out. That doesn’t mean that it won’t work out over a period of time, but it may not work out for June 12,” Trump said in the Oval Office where he hosted Moon.
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Trump and Kim are scheduled to meet in Singapore on June 12. However, North Korea has threatened to cancel the meeting over a joint US-South Korea military exercise. The US has said it was going ahead with the preparation. “You will know soon,” Trump told reporters about the summit. “If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later…You never know about deals…I’ve made a lot of deals. You never really know,” Trump said.
Trump said he believed Kim was “serious” about denuclearization as he aims to push ahead with the Singapore summit. “I do think he is serious. I think he is absolutely very serious,” he said but declined to say whether he had spoken to Kim. “They’re hardworking, great people,” he said of North Koreans. “He will be extremely happy. He will be very happy” he said of Kim if the deal works out.
Earlier, Moon’s national security advisor Chung Eui-Yong told reporters that there were 99.9% chances for the summit to happen. “We believe there is a 99.9% chance the North Korea-US summit (set for June 12 in Singapore) will be held as scheduled. But we’re just preparing for many different possibilities,” Chung told reporters.
“We’re trying to understand the situation from the North’s perspective,” he said when asked about changes in North Korea’s rhetoric. The two leaders were scheduled to have a candid conversation – in multiple settings including over lunch at the White House – on how to make the North-US summit a success and produce significant agreements and how to best implement those agreements, Chung said.
READ ALSO: US-North Korea summit to cancel? Kim Jong Un tests Donald Trump
“South Korea and the US have been sharing every bit of information and have remained in close coordination with each other,” Chung said. “We’ve had various working-level discussions on how to steer North Korea in a direction that we want, and I expect (Moon and Trump) will have great talks this time,” he added. Chung denied the New York Times article reporting that Trump is now doubting the advisability of the June 12 summit. “During phone calls between our two leaders or talks between our National Security Councils, I never got such an impression,” he said.
During the meeting in the Oval Office, Moon told reporters he was confident in Trump’s peacemaking abilities, and that he the potential to bring prosperity to North Korea.
Trump also floated the idea of unifying North and South Korea. “Maybe in the future, they will go back to one Korea,” he said.
North Korea said last week that it was considering cancelling the summit with the United States because it felt the U.S. was manipulating them into completely abandoning its nuclear weapon program. “We are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes,” Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, said in a statement, according to a leading daily.
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