President Donald Trump said he would “love” to extend his Asia tour to try to squeeze in a sit-down with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un.
Trump, 79, could even delay his return home to meet with the totalitarian regime leader, he said, and hinted that they could talk about sanctions relief.
He told reporters he was desperate for another face-to-face with the North Korea dictator. “It’s our last stop, so it would be pretty easy to do,” the president told reporters on Air Force One on his way to Japan, the second stop of his tour, adding, “If he’d like to meet, I’m around. I got along great with Kim Jong Un.”
When asked what he could offer, Trump replied, “Well, we have sanctions. That’s pretty big to start off with. I would say that’s about as big as you get.”
Trump will first meet Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, before heading to see South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung, 60, and China’s Xi Jinping, 72. On Sunday, he was in Malaysia for the ASEAN summit.
Trump aides and officials in Seoul have downplayed the odds of a Kim encounter, The Washington Post reported, and U.S. officials have not formally approached Pyongyang about a summit.
“I would love to see him if he wants to, if he even gets this message,” Trump said. “We haven’t mentioned it, but he knows I’m going over there.”
Trump said on Friday that his attempts to meet Kim have been stymied by North Korea’s apparent lack of telephones.
Trump met Kim, 41, three times in his first term—Singapore in 2018, Hanoi in 2019, and a hastily arranged photo-op at the DMZ, also in 2019, where Trump stepped a few paces into North Korea, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to do so.
During those talks, Kim requested that Trump lift sanctions on his country in exchange for a partial dismantling of its nuclear program.
However, while Kim said during a speech last month that he has “a good memory of President Trump,” North Korean state media reported he will now meet with Trump only “if the U.S. drops its hollow obsession with denuclearization.”
Kim has tightened ties with U.S. foes China and Russia while expanding production of nuclear fuel, the Post reported, while North Korea has signaled it won’t barter away its arsenal.
Trump’s earlier meetings with Kim did not produce a denuclearization deal.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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