US President Donald Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had responded to his latest outreach, a day after he ordered the Pentagon to scale back training with longtime ally South Korea.
Asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Monday why Mr. Kim did not respond to requests for a meeting, Trump replied, “How do we know that Mr. Kim has not responded?”
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When asked again, Trump said, “Yes, he does.”
The US president did not provide further details, but said the exchange had been “very positive.”
There was no immediate comment from North Korea.
President Trump on Sunday directed the Pentagon to “significantly reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, a longtime ally in Asia.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, President Trump said the annual drills are “not only costly, but send a completely inappropriate and hostile signal to a country that has been unchallenged and respectful for as long as Donald J. Trump has been president.”
He also linked the decision to South Korea’s refusal to support the US-Israel war against Iran.
South Korea’s position on Iran
President Trump on Monday once again criticized South Korea over its war with Iran.
“Wait a minute,” he said in the Oval Office. “We have 39,000 soldiers over there protecting you from your neighbor, Kim Jong-un, and yet you’re not willing to help us with a very simple military operation in Iran. That’s strange.”
President Trump once again questioned U.S. support for both South Korea and its NATO allies, which have refused to contribute to the Iran war. “We can’t go around and defend all these countries, especially if they don’t help us,” he said.
South Korean officials said the exercises had started on schedule and said they expected Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim to return to talks because of their personal chemistry.
On Tuesday, Seoul’s presidential office announced that the drills did not reflect “an intention to attack North Korea or increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has repeatedly stated that the basic purpose is “to protect the safe and peaceful daily lives of the people, not to treat any particular group as an adversary.”
The White House has placed less emphasis on the relationship between Trump and Kim than it did during the president’s first term, when the two met and exchanged letters before negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons collapsed in 2019. Since then, the US president has repeatedly expressed interest in reviving direct diplomacy with the North Korean leader.
Last year, Mr. Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, acknowledged that her brother’s personal relationship with Mr. Trump was “not bad,” but if Washington intended to use the personal relationship as a way to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, that effort would only be subject to “ridicule.”
“I understand him.”
President Trump and Chairman Kim last met in 2019, and North Korea has significantly strengthened ties with Russia while maintaining close ties with China.
North Korean forces have fought together in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Kiev announced last week that a North Korean-made missile was used in a Russian ballistic missile attack on a steel mill in Zaporizhzhia.
The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized North Korea’s military aid to Russia in Ukraine, but Trump said Monday that “Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect.”
“I understand him, and he understands me,” he said.
Analysts said another meeting between the two sides was possible despite North Korea’s reticence toward Trump’s overtures and Kim’s stronger position since the last summit.
But Victor Cha, director of the South Korea program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, doubts North Korea will respond immediately.
“I think they’re going to bide their time and wait a little bit,” he told Reuters.
Cha said part of Trump’s motivation for bringing up North Korea again seemed to be to divert headlines from fighting the Iran war, but he was clearly interested in reuniting with Kim.
