President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who are both planning to meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un this spring, pledged Friday to maintain “maximum pressure” on his authoritarian regime and seek action on giving up his nukes, the White House said. In a phone
President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who are both planning to meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un this spring, pledged Friday to maintain “maximum pressure” on his authoritarian regime and seek action on giving up his nukes, the White House said.
In a phone call with Moon, Trump reiterated his intention to meet Kim by the end of May. According to a White House statement, the allied leaders “agreed that concrete actions, not words, will be the key to achieving permanent denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” They also agreed that a “brighter future is available for North Korea, if it chooses the right path,” the White House stated.
Moon is due to meet Kim in April, a prelude to what would be first U. S.-North Korean summit during seven decades of hostility since the 1950-53 Korean War. Preparations for the Trump-Kim summit, which was announced out of the blue last week, were always going to be tricky. Now, they have been thrown an early curve ball with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s abrupt firing by Trump on Tuesday.
North Korea has yet to publicly confirm the summit plans, and the venue for the meeting remains up in the air, although a rare visit by the North’s top diplomat to Sweden on Friday fueled speculation the Scandinavian nation might play host.
On Friday, the U. S. official left in charge of the State Department after Tillerson’s departure faced a delicate diplomatic task: to keep America’s key Asian allies on the same page over the outreach to Kim.
