North Korean leader takes scenic route via China to Wednesday’s meeting in Hanoi
Kim Jong Un has boarded a train to Vietnam for his second summit with US president Donald Trump, North Korea state media have confirmed.
The North Korean leader was accompanied by Kim Yong Chol, who has been a key negotiator in talks with the US, and by his sister Kim Yo Jong, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported.
There was a report of a green and yellow train similar to one used in the past by Kim crossing into the Chinese border city of Dandong via a bridge. Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret and it could take more than two days for the train to travel thousands of miles through China to Vietnam.
The Trump-Kim meeting is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi.
Their first summit last June in Singapore ended without substantive agreements on the North’s nuclear disarmament and triggered a months-long stalemate in negotiations as Washington and Pyongyang struggled with the sequencing of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and the removal of US-led sanctions against the North.
Vietnam’s foreign ministry announced on Saturday that Kim would pay an official goodwill visit to the country “in the coming days” in response to an invitation by the president Nguyễn Phú Trọng, who is also the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party.
