Why is Kim Jong Un ignoring Donald Trump? The clues that explain the deafening silence from Pyongyang

US President Donald Trump has said he hopes North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will get in touch with him so the two can meet again. International media are waiting to see if there will be a repeat of the historic meeting in 2019, when the US leader became the first sitting head of state to set foot in North Korea when the two shook hands.

Being on an Asian tour, the White House leader even declared himself ready to extend his trip to meet Kim again. The New York Times noted that while Trump is involved in a series of intense diplomatic meetings and important meetings in Asia this week, he appeared eager to add one more item to his busy schedule: a face-to-face meeting with the North Korean leader.

“Yes, I would. If you want to get the message across, I'm open to that possibility,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One as he departed for the region, adding that he “has a great relationship” with the Pyongyang leader.

In not-so-subtle remarks, Trump emphasized that he hoped Kim would reach out to him so they could have their first meeting in his second term. His servile tone was surprising even for a president who prides himself on his diplomacy, especially with authoritarian leaders, the NYT comments.

Will Trump and Kim meet?

But will the US president be able to arrange a meeting with Kim Jong Un during his visit to South Korea, where he is due to arrive on Wednesday? It's a question that Hankyoreh, a South Korean publication, which noted, like the international press, that Pyongyang did not give any answer for the head of the White House, tried to answer.

According to the quoted source, a careful analysis of the two leaders' recent rhetoric suggests that a repeat of their 2019 meeting is unlikely.

Despite Trump's professed openness to dialogue, the signals the US president has been sending are ambiguous at best.

Although Trump told reporters over the weekend that he would meet with Kim “if he contacts me,” it is unclear whether his statement indicates the difficulties of arranging a high-level meeting between North Korea and the United States ahead of an impromptu meeting, or whether the American leader is trying to deflect accusations that he is eager to meet the North Korean dictator.

And Trump's busy schedule will make it difficult for him to find a window for a meeting with Kim. On Wednesday, on his first day in South Korea, Trump is scheduled to meet with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Gyeongju. And the next day he will participate in a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan.

Hankyoreh believes that Kim's recent actions show that he is more focused on emphasizing Pyongyang's “special relationship” with Beijing and Moscow, which may show that the deafening silence over North Korea is not so much a strategy of cajoling as it is a deliberate disregard for the US and a manifestation of his disinterest in a meeting with Trump.

“Pyongyang will always be with Moscow”

“Pyongyang will always be with Moscow,” Kim said last week at the opening ceremony of the Overseas Military Operations War Memorial Museum, built in honor of soldiers who fought alongside the Russians and died in the Ukraine war. The next day, Kim paid tribute to Chinese soldiers who sacrificed themselves on the Korean front.

Another move by Pyongyang that suggests there is no enthusiasm for an impromptu meeting with Washington is the testing of two hypersonic missiles. Perhaps the most important aspect is a report published by the official KCNA news agency that the head of North Korean diplomacy, Choe Son Hui, will visit Belarus and Russia, where she later met with President Vladimir Putin.

This news appears to be a fairly direct way of rejecting Trump after his suggestion that he is willing to meet with the North Korean leader if Kim initiates contact, Hankyoreh points out.

The two leaders' rhetoric is markedly different from that used at the Panmunjom meeting in June 2019. At the time, less than five hours after Trump tweeted “if North Korea's Chairman Kim sees this message, I would meet him at the border/DMZ (Demilitarized Zone, no) just to shake his hand and say hello(?)!”, Choe issued a statement in which he described Trump's message as “a very interesting suggestion.”

During his first term, Trump met with Kim three times, including in June 2019 in the Demilitarized Zone, a meeting arranged just 32 hours after Trump proposed it publicly on social media.

Moreover, at the time of the Panmunjom meeting, the two countries were motivated by the diplomatic and political need to continue the legacy of their successful June 2018 summit, even after the disastrous Hanoi summit in February 2019. In the current climate, however, the two countries do not seem to be able to agree even on the preconditions for a meeting.

Kim rejected an “absurd” request made by the US

In a speech to North Korea's legislature last month, Kim Jong Un said there was “no reason not to confront” the US if it dropped its “absurd” demand for North Korea's denuclearization, essentially setting the price for negotiations on normalizing relations with the US on recognition as a nuclear power.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continued to say it was open to talks “without any preconditions,” simultaneously conveying to South Korea and Japan that its position had not changed on the goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Although Trump has described North Korea as “kind of a nuclear power,” he is reluctant to formally acknowledge Kim Jong Un's possession of nuclear weapons.

Analysts cited by The Korean Times noted that the two leaders appear to have divergent goals. Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute of East Asian Studies, said Pyongyang “probably feels that Trump is not yet ready for serious talks,” adding that Kim “would prefer to avoid another meeting like the one in Hanoi, which resulted in an embarrassing political situation.”

A South Korean official thinks there is a chance

The 2019 Hanoi summit ended with no agreement and the untimely departure of the US president after Kim refused Trump's request to reveal and dismantle secret nuclear sites identified by US intelligence.

Yang Moo-jin from the University of North Korean Studies appreciates that if the North Korean leader has “the firm support of Russia and China, Kim is in no rush to meet” with Trump.

Officials in Seoul say the current administration is “much better prepared” for a surprise meeting, should it happen again.

Experts estimate that there is little chance of a Trump-Kim meeting, but it is impossible to determine whether it will take place, given the unpredictable styles of the two leaders, Deutsche Welle also notes.

Instead, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told reporters that the Pyongyang leader “seems to be managing his message to Washington very carefully” and that there was a “considerable” chance of a meeting, according to AFP, cited by the BBC.

The Seoul official said there were reports that North Korean workers had recently cleaned and repainted an area in the northern part of the North-South Korean border village of Panmunjeom within the Demilitarized Zone, located about 60 kilometers from Seoul.