On October 24, Trump went on a several-day tour of the Indo-Pacific region, during which he is scheduled to meet, in particular, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
CNN reported that the Trump administration is preparing his meeting with Kim Jong-un. Channel sources said that Trump has publicly and privately expressed a desire to meet with him. At the end of September, the leader of the DPRK said that there was supposedly no reason to avoid negotiations with the United States, but named a condition: Washington must abandon the idea of complete denuclearization of the DPRK.
Aboard Presidential Air Force One, Trump spoke of his “excellent relationship” with the North Korean leader and said he was willing to meet with him.
The newspaper also noted that Trump actually recognized the DPRK as a nuclear state. According to the head of the White House, North Korea has “a lot of nuclear weapons.”
Context
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang have been strained over North Korea's nuclear program and deteriorated sharply in early April 2017 when it once again launched a ballistic missile toward the east coast of South Korea, which crashed into the Sea of Japan. Thus, the DPRK has once again violated a UN Security Council resolution. Trump then said that North Korea was “looking for trouble.” The DPRK believed that the United States was trying to invade their country. Relations between Pyongyang and Washington were described in detail in an article by the online publication GORDON.
During his first presidential term, Trump met with Kim Jong-un three times. Last meeting took place in June 2019 in Panmunjom, a village in the demilitarized zone on the border of the DPRK and South Korea. On June 30, Moon Jae-in, then President of South Korea, announced the end of an era of hostility and the beginning of a new, peaceful era between the DPRK and the United States, but in November North Korea noted that it was no longer interested in negotiations with Trump because they “give nothing.”
