Trump summit with Kim to be held June 12 in Singapore
WASHINGTON — The Beltway’s favorite guessing game for the last month ended Thursday when President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12.
“The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th,” Trump tweeted. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”
The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th. We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2018
The announcement came just hours after Trump celebrated the return of three Americans freed by North Korea and suggested their release heralded a potential breakthrough toward the goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
With the former detainees by his side on a dark air base tarmac, Trump said during a made-for-TV ceremony that it was a “great honor” to welcome the men back to the U.S., but he added that “the true honor is going to be if we have a victory in getting rid of nuclear weapons.”
Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, other top officials and first lady Melania Trump joined the president in the highly scripted celebration in the wee hours of Thursday morning at Joint Base Andrews near Washington. The men — Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song and Tony Kim — had been released Wednesday amid a warming of relations between the longtime adversaries.
Trump thanked Kim for releasing the Americans and said he believes Kim wants to reach an agreement on denuclearization at their upcoming summit. “I really think he wants to do something.”
Site criteria
Speculation about the site of the summit had focused on where Kim could reach by train, or by plane on one tank of fuel, as well as where he went to school.
Trump had teased the White House press corps mischievously before the announcement, suggesting the choice of venues had been cut to five locations, then two. One day he suggested the summit might occur in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, then later he said it would not.
Deputy press secretary Raj Shah told reporters Singapore was chosen because the city-state could ensure security for both leaders and would offer neutrality.
Shah was not sure if there would be a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Kim. When reporters have asked Trump if he and Kim have talked by phone, the president has refused to answer.
Trump and Kim will meet in the first North Korea-U.S. summit talks since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Kim has suspended nuclear and missile tests and put his nuclear program up for negotiation, but questions remain about how serious his offer is and what disarmament steps he would be willing to take.
The White House has said withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from South Korea is “not on the table.”
Pompeo traveled to Pyongyang twice to meet with Kim in recent months in a precursor to the Trump-Kim meeting.
Located at the southern tip of Malaysia, Singapore is a regional hub in Southeast Asia whose free enterprise philosophy welcomes trading partners from everywhere. It has close diplomatic and defense ties with the U.S. and yet is also familiar ground for North Korea, with which it established diplomatic relations in 1975.
A prosperous city-state, Singapore has already hosted a historic meeting between two leaders burdened with a legacy of bad blood and mutual distrust. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s then-President Ma Ying-jeou came in 2015 to discuss cross-strait issues, the first such meeting since Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or at 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
