TOKYO (AP) — With just weeks to go, there’s still no official word on where President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong…
TOKYO (AP) — With just weeks to go, there’s still no official word on where President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will hold their unprecedented summit.
Will they pick an obvious place like one of their own capitals, or something off the wall, like a ship at sea? Or a place so obscure the curious will be sent frantically searching Google Earth?
There’s no dearth of speculation.
Japan surrendered to end World War II on a ship, the USS Missouri. And Potsdam and Yalta are known among historians and locals more so than the rest of us. But like those places, the host city for a Trump-Kim summit could be etched indelibly in the pages of history.
Here are some places they might be eyeing.
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IN THE DMZ
This is probably the most sensible choice.
Holding the summit in what is called the Joint Security Area inside the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea would check off some boxes for pragmatists.
It’s spitting distance from the safety of Kim’s own borders, so getting there (and getting out hastily, in a contingency) with a large entourage of bodyguards and other assorted personnel would be easier and cheaper. Kim is supposed to hold his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in there in late April, before the Trump summit, so that could be something of a dress rehearsal.
But the location has some complicated optics.
It’s a symbol of the division of Korea 70 years ago into the socialist North and the capitalist South. For Kim, whose regime doesn’t recognize South Korea as a legitimate country, it would have the added symbolism of being where the North claims it forced the U. S. and its allies in the 1950-53 Korean War to essentially capitulate and sign an armistice agreement.
For Trump, going there could be used as a way of showing support for the U. S. troops who are stationed along the DMZ to defend against a Northern invasion. Trump has, however, suggested that the U. S. pays too much to keep its roughly 30,000 troops in the South, so that might be a bit ticklish.
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PYONGYANG
Having a U. S. president come all the way to the North Korean capital would be the holy grail for Kim. He could play the host and spin the whole thing as Trump arriving, tail between his legs, to pay homage to Kim and his nuclear weapons.
That’s why it almost certainly won’t happen.
But Kim has cause to push hard for it. It’s where his father, Kim Jong Il, held summit meetings with South Korean presidents in 2000 and 2007 and with Japan’s prime minister in 2002, so there is a strong precedent.
