Trump administration officials have privately discussed setting up a meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un when Trump visits Asia next month, though many are sceptical that it will ultimately happen, sources familiar with the matter said.
Officials have not yet done any of the serious logistical planning they would need to do to arrange such a visit, the sources said, pointing to the fact that there have not been any communications between Washington and Pyongyang like Trump had at times during his first term.
Trump’s initial outreach to the North Korean leader earlier this year never received a reply because the North Koreans would not accept the letter, two sources told CNN.
For the upcoming trip, the White House has instead been far more focused on arranging a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping amid escalating trade tensions between the US and China.
But Trump has publicly and privately expressed a desire to meet his North Korean counterpart, and officials have left the door open to a meeting while he’s on his trip to Asia.
In Trump’s first term, officials arranged a handshake between the two men in the Korean demilitarised zone in less than 48 hours after the president tweeted an invitation to get together, an example of how quickly things can change.
Trump’s personal interest in a potential sit-down with Kim was initially piqued after Trump hosted South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House in August, the sources said.
During their meeting, Lee formally invited Trump to attend the gathering of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers in South Korea and suggested the setting could provide Trump with a prime opportunity to meet with Kim, CNN previously reported.
Trump was open to the idea, telling Lee he would look into it.
“I will do that, and we’ll have talks. He’d like to meet with me,” Trump said of the North Korean leader.
“We look forward to meeting with him, and we’ll make relations better.”
For his part, Kim also expressed an openness to sitting down with Trump during a speech before the North Korean parliament last month, according to comments carried by North Korean state media.
“Personally, I still have good memories of US President Trump,” Kim said during his speech, per the reports.
“If the US drops its hollow obsession with denuclearisation and wants to pursue peaceful coexistence with North Korea based on the recognition of reality, there is no reason for us not to sit down with the US.”
But things have shifted since Trump met Kim in 2019 at Panmunjom on the border that divides the two Koreas.
South Korea played a major part in bringing North Korea back to the table and laying the groundwork for that meeting, in which Trump become the first US president step foot in the isolated and reclusive North.
Ties between the two Koreas were much warmer then. South Korea’s new president has only been in power a few months and has yet to undo the legacy of his predecessor, who was far more hawkish towards Kim’s regime.
According to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, there is no ongoing communication between South and North Korea regarding a possible North Korea-US summit.
And while White House security teams have made two trips to South Korea to scout out locations ahead of Trump’s arrival, none of those trips was to the Panmunjom area, a South Korean government source said, suggesting a repeat of the 2019 summit with Kim is not in the cards for now.
The White House declined to comment.
A hastily arranged handshake
The high-profile summits between Trump and Kim during the president’s first term failed to accomplish the president’s main goal: reining in North Korea’s nuclear program.
Their meetings in Hanoi and Singapore came after intense prep work between the two sides that focused heavily on logistics and substance.
As a result, administration officials and experts believe that if they were to meet again, both sides would have to be making arrangements now.
But not every engagement between the two leaders was built upon the prolonged planning of working-level officials.
The last meeting between Trump and Kim in 2019 was arranged hastily after the president tweeted an invitation to get together.
The post abruptly set the wheels into motion for the two to meet at the DMZ, a now famous visit that resulted in Trump briefly stepping over the demarcation line into North Korea.
At the time of that invitation, there had not been any active communications between the two sides for months, CNN previously reported.
Rather, Trump had departed his last summit with the North Korean leader in Hanoi earlier that year without a deal or any signs of progress, signaling the breakdown of diplomatic efforts at the highest level.
“Sometimes you have to walk,” Trump said during a news conference following the conclusion of the Hanoi summit, which broke up earlier than planned.
“This was just one of those times.”
Prior to Trump’s 2019 South Korea trip, his former North Korea staffers had considered trying to organise another meeting between the two leaders, but ultimately decided against it because they did not think that the moment was ripe to draw North Korea back to the table, according to former administration officials.
That changed, however, when Trump began expressing interest in a sit down while he was on the ground in Asia.
The president mentioned a possible meeting when he met with Chinese leader Xi at the time.
He asked his then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if he thought it would be a good idea, according to a former administration official.
Pompeo said he would look into it.
To the surprise of many of the members of the team working on the North Korea portfolio, Trump’s tweet went out the next morning.
“After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!” Trump tweeted.
Trump administration officials immediately went into overdrive as they tried to figure out if Kim would accept.
A Korean Central News Agency article came out hours after Trump’s tweet signaling Pyongyang’s openness to the meeting, something the Trump administration closely noted, the former official said.
While the article stated that the North Koreans did not know the purpose of the meeting, they did not close the door on the possibility.
Administration officials at that point believed a meeting was highly likely, the source said.
The Trump administration then activated the US-North Korea hotline located at the DMZ that is manned 24/7 by a US military officer who speaks Korean.
But the calls went unanswered.
Then they turned to another tactic that they had used before: a bullhorn.
A US military officer went to the border and used the bullhorn to project the message to the North Korean side that the US was trying to communicate with them about a leader-level meeting, the former official said.
On the other side, a North Korean recorded the message but did not respond.
Hours later, the hotline rang with an invitation for a US delegation to come to North Korea for a planning meeting.
The US delegation, which included the Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun, State Department official Kevin Kim and the NSA Senior Director for the Korean Peninsula Allison Hooker, flew from Seoul to the DMZ the same night that Trump’s tweet had been sent, where they met for about an hour with their North Korean counterparts.
The two sides discussed the possible meeting but nothing was formally agreed to, and the Trump administration officials left with North Korea’s request for a detailed proposal by midnight.
That proposal was faxed to Pyongyang when the officials returned to Seoul.
North Korea’s response did not come overnight, and in the morning, US officials were monitoring every possible channel closely.
Then a clear signal came through: the North Koreans had sent an expansive team to clean their side of the space along the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea, which was highly unusual.
Then the hotline rang, and the news came that Kim Jong Un would partake in the meeting with Trump later that day.
As he approached the North Korean leader, Trump took 20 steps into the country, making history as the first sitting US leader to set foot in the hermit kingdom.
The two leaders then shook hands and met for about an hour.
