President Donald Trump on Friday said the date and location have been set for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, building suspense for the unprecedented talks and hinting at progress in freeing three Americans held in North Korea.
The White House has said the first meeting between sitting U.S. and North Korean leaders could take place in the coming weeks. Trump is expected to push for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
The demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between North and South Korea and Singapore are among the top choices being considered for the summit. Trump this week expressed a preference for the DMZ but also said Singapore was possible.
Peace move: Trump said Friday that a time and a venue have been decided for the summit with Kim Jong Un
Peace location: Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in raised their hands after signing a joint declaration on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone on April 27. The zone has been floated as a venue
Peace House: The blue-pained building which straddles both Koreas was the venue last month for the meeting between the dictator and the president
The Peace House at the DMZ was the venue for a meeting last month between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, was to discuss the summit with his South Korean counterpart, Chung Eui-yong, at the White House on Friday, officials said.
Trump, a former reality TV star who likes to build suspense about upcoming presidential news, did not give a date or location for the talks and White House officials did not immediately provide further clarity.
The U.S. government is looking into reports that three Americans arrested in recent years in North Korea had recently been relocated from a labor camp to a hotel near Pyongyang, as expectations grow that they will be released before the summit.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Thursday that if North Korea were to free the three Americans, ‘We certainly would see this as a sign of good will’ ahead of the Trump-Kim summit.
Trump, speaking to reporters outside the White House, suggested activity was under way involving the captives.
‘We’re having very substantive talks with North Korea and a lot of things have already happened with respect to the (U.S.) hostages. I think you’re going to see very good things,’ Trump told reporters.
Trump also told reporters on Friday that he was not considering reducing the U.S. military’s presence in South Korea as part of the negotiations.
‘Troops are not on the table,’ he said before a flight to Dallas, Texas, where he will address the National Rifle Association. But he also said he would eventually like to bring them home.
The US citizens, who are being detained in the North on espionage or ‘hostile acts’ against the secretive regime, could be set free through the village of Panmunjom, which sits near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South.
‘I am aware that North Korea and the United States have agreed to free the three Korean Americans — Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul — through Panmunjom tomorrow,’ said one source to the Yonhap News Agency, who asked not to be named.
Another source said that the three could be released on Sunday or Monday.
Kim Dong-chul, pictured above, left and right, has been detained since 2015. He was arrested for spying and has since been sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour
The White House said it would welcome the release of three Americans imprisoned in North Korea as a goodwill gesture before a planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but that it could not confirm reports that they are about to be freed.
Expectations have grown that North Korea would soon release the three ahead of the unprecedented summit in the coming weeks.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s new main lawyer, told Fox News Channel that Pyongyang would release them as early as Thursday.
It was not immediately clear whether Giuliani had direct knowledge of negotiations around the issue.
CNN, citing an unnamed source, said on Thursday the prisoners’ release was imminent, adding the groundwork for the move was laid two months ago when North Korea’s foreign minister traveled to Sweden and proposed the idea.
US citizen Kim Hak-song was detained ‘on suspicion of acts against the state’
‘We can’t confirm the validity of any of the reports currently out about their release, but we certainly would see this as a sign of goodwill if North Korea were to release the three Americans ahead of discussions between President Trump and Kim Jong Un,’ White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters.
The three are Korean-American missionary Kim Dong Chul, arrested in 2015; Kim Sang-duk, also known as Tony Kim, who spent a month teaching at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST) before he was arrested in 2017; and Kim Hak Song, who also taught at PUST and was detained in 2017.
Tony Kim, also known as Kim Sang-Duk, a Korean-American professor and aid worker
Trump did not mention Korea or the prisoners when he spoke at a prayer event at the White House on Thursday. ‘Our country is doing very well. You’ll see some very good announcements very shortly,’ he said.
But of the three, only Kim Dong Chul was arrested before Trump became president in January 2017.
The U.S. government is looking into reports that the Americans had recently been relocated from a labor camp to a hotel near Pyongyang, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
The summit between Trump and Kim is expected to take place in late May or early June.
In preparing for the summit, Trump’s administration has said it wants North Korea’s ‘complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization’ but has offered few details of the strategy it will employ at the talks.
Kim told the Chinese government’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, on Thursday that he is committed to denuclearization, China’s foreign ministry said, as diplomatic efforts to bring lasting peace to the Korean peninsula gather pace.
‘Kim Jong Un said achieving the denuclearization of the peninsula is the firm position of the North Korean side,’ China’s foreign ministry said after Wang met Kim in Pyongyang.
North Korea announced on Sunday that it would close its main nuclear test site next month but some U.S. officials are skeptical that Pyongyang will give up its nuclear arsenal.
Trump has promised to ensure that North Korea does not get the capability to build a nuclear bomb that can hit the mainland United States.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is postponing his plans to travel to Brazil this month in order to ensure foreign policy resources are focused on Trump’s talks with Kim, Pence’s spokeswoman said.
The exact date and location has yet to be fixed for the meeting between Trump and Kim, who lobbed personal insults and lambasted each other last year over North Korea’s nuclear arms ambitions.
The change in tone has been helped by last week’s meeting between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, at which the two pledged to work for ‘complete denuclearization’ of the Korean peninsula. Trump said he would maintain pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions ahead of his own meeting with Kim.
Even as Washington presses for the release of the three American prisoners, the parents of a U.S. college student who died last year soon after being release from captivity in North Korea have sued Pyongyang over their son’s death, saying Otto Warmbier was ‘brutally tortured and murdered.’
Warmbier’s parents told a meeting at the United Nations on Thursday that they would no longer be silent and believed they had to stand up for their son and other families whose loved ones had been abducted by North Korea.
‘The only thing we can do is rub their noses in this. It embarrasses them,’ said Cindy Warmbier, Otto’s mother. ‘You can’t negotiate. You just have to shame them.’