The US President headed to South Korea from the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. In an earlier tweet, Mr Trump suggested meeting the North Korean leader at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between the two nations. He said: “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(?)!”
The US President later told reporters: “I just thought of it this morning. We’ll be there and I just put out a feeler because I don’t know where he is right now. He may not be in North Korea.
“If he’s there, we’ll see each other for two minutes, that’s all we can, but that will be fine.”
Following Mr Trump’s comments, North Korea’s first vice-minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son Hui said a summit between the two leaders would be “meaningful” in advancing relations.
He said: “We see it as a very interesting suggestion, but we have not received an official proposal in this regard.
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“I am of the view that if the DPRK-U.S. summit meetings take place on the division line, as is intended by President Trump, it would serve as another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations.”
Yesterday, US special envoy Stephen Biegun said Washington was ready to hold talks with North Korea on the topic of nuclear activity.
So far attempts have been made to reach a denuclearisation agreement between the two countries.
Mr Biegun told his South Korean counterpart that the US wanted to make “simultaneous, parallel” progress on the agreement reached at a summit between Mr Trump and Mr Kim in Singapore last year.
The US President’s comments come after North Korea said time was running out for the countries to reach an agreement.
The country’s senior diplomat for negotiations claimed “dialogue would not open by itself” before reminding the US it must begin talks.
The statement was published by Pyongyang’s Korea Central News Agency and made by Kwon Jong Gun, director-general for US affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He said: “The dialogue would not open by itself, though the United States repeatedly talks about resumption of dialogue like a parrot without considering any realistic proposal that would fully conform with the interests of both sides.
“If the United States is to move towards producing a result, time will not be enough.”
The two countries have been at loggerheads since their second summit in Vietnam in February where nuclear talks fell apart.
Disagreements over the lowering of sanctions and the withdrawal of its nuclear and ballistic weapons programme saw the talks stop.