US President Donald Trump said he expects to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this year, signalling a possible revival of his personal diplomacy with Pyongyang.
Trump also said North Korea has 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons, marking the first time he has publicly cited a specific figure for the country’s nuclear arsenal, according to Yonhap News Agency.
“Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked whether he expected to meet Kim later this year. He did not elaborate on plans to re-engage with the North Korean leader.
Trump’s remarks came a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that he had been pressing aides about arranging a meeting with Kim, potentially during his next Asia trip for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, in November.
Asked whether he was exchanging letters with Kim, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that.”
However, Trump declined to say whether denuclearisation remained his administration’s objective in re-engaging with Pyongyang, raising questions over whether Washington could shift towards a focus on reducing tensions and managing nuclear risks instead.
“I don’t want to talk about that, but I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un as you know, you’ve seen,” Trump said. “He didn’t like (Joe) Biden. He didn’t like (Barack) Obama. He didn’t like anybody, but he likes me.”
The Trump administration had previously reaffirmed its commitment to the “complete” denuclearisation of North Korea.
A new meeting would mark a return to the personal diplomacy that produced three encounters between Trump and Kim during Trump’s first term.
The two leaders first met in Singapore in June 2018, followed by a second summit in Hanoi in February 2019 and a third meeting at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June that year.
Speculation over renewed engagement has also grown following Trump’s recent order to scale back South Korea-US military exercises, which has been viewed as a conciliatory move towards Pyongyang.
North Korea has long condemned the joint military drills as rehearsals for an attack.
