Trump makes history with Kim, revives talks

Bloomberg

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un agreed to restart nuclear talks after an hour-long meeting on Sunday which saw Trump become the first American leader to set foot in North Korea while in office.
Trump hailed ties with Kim, whom he has now met three times, and invited him to visit the White House. The meeting was hastily planned after the president issued an offer via Twitter for Kim to join him at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.
Kim said he was “surprised” by Trump’s request to meet, and called the US president’s short walk over the demarcation line into North Korea “a very courageous and determined act.”
Teams from each side will resume talks over the next few weeks “and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters at the DMZ. He said sanctions would remain for now but suggested some could be lifted in the course of the negotiations. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who took part in at least some of the meeting, praised Trump’s “bold, drastic, creative approach.
“We want to get it right,” Trump said of nuclear talks that had been stalled for months since a failed summit with Kim in Vietnam.
“We’re not looking for speed. We want to get it right.”
“The relationship that we’ve developed has meant so much to so many people,” he told reporters, standing next to the North Korean leader. He thanked Kim for showing up, saying his willingness to meet on short notice “made us both look good.”
While Trump has met Kim twice before at summits in Singapore and Hanoi, no US president has ever sat down with a North Korean leader at the DMZ. Trump made his audacious invitation to Kim while in Japan for the Group of 20 summit, jolting the gathering of world leaders as well as officials in the US and Seoul.
“I saw that tweet and it felt like you’ve sent a flower of hope for the Korean Peninsula,” Moon told Trump. “If you shake hands with Chairman Kim Jong-un at the Military Demarcation Line, it would be historic, just by the picture of it.”
Trump and Kim have maintained friendly relations despite failing to agree on a path forward to a deal that would ease sanctions in return for steps toward eliminating North Korea’s nuclear threat. Their Hanoi meeting collapsed after Trump refused Kim’s demand for sanctions relief in exchange for only dismantling his main nuclear complex at Yongbyon.
Moon said that if Kim were to “sincerely, completely” dismantle Yongbyon, the international community would be able to discuss easing sanctions.
“It’ll be the starting point for an irreversible denuclearisation,” he said.
Trump defended his meetings with Kim and claimed that his predecessor, Barack Obama had sought a meeting with the North Korean leader and been refused.
“A lot’s been done,” he said, citing Kim’s restraint from testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles since talks first began.
“President Obama wanted to meet and Chairman Kim would not meet him. They were begging for meetings constantly.”
Ben Rhodes, who was Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said in a tweet the former president never sought to see Kim.
“Trump is lying,” Rhodes said. “Foreign policy isn’t reality television it’s reality.”
US relations with North Korea took a significant turn for the worse in 2009 after Pyongyang evicted international inspectors from Yongbyon and resumed development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
During meetings with Moon and his visit to the DMZ, Trump repeatedly complained he hasn’t received enough credit for lowering tensions with North Korea, and exaggerated the state of relations with the country before he took office.

Ivanka Trump predicts ‘golden era’ for N Korea
Bloomberg

Donald Trump’s daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump predicted that the Korean peninsula would enjoy a “golden era” if Kim Jong-un closes a deal with her father to relinquish his nuclear weapons.
“We are on the precipice of ushering in potentially a golden era for the Korean peninsula,” Trump said. “There are serious steps that need to be taken by North Korea to realise that goal — of course, denuclearisation.”
Donald Trump said in a news conference following the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan that he’d step over the border into North Korea if invited by Kim, which would make him the first sitting American president to visit the isolated country.
“I understand they want to meet,” Trump said of the North Koreans at a meeting with South Korean business leaders. But he didn’t indicate whether Kim would show up.
“I’d love to say hello,” he said. “Let’s see what happens. They’re trying to work it out. Not so easy.”
Ivanka Trump declined to say whether there was any update on Kim. “I’ll let the team roll that one out,” she said. Sunday’s events would be “another step” toward an agreement with Pyongyang “regardless of whether there’s a meeting,” she said.