President Donald Trump touted his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and said the two would meet ‘someday’ — just before a summit at the White House with South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung.
During Trump’s first term in office, the president met with Kim on multiple occasions — including in Singapore in 2018, and then twice in 2019 in Vietnam and within North Korea — for denuclearization talks.
‘I have very good relationships with Kim Jong UN, North Korea,’ Trump told reporters at the White House Monday. ‘I mean, a lot of people would say, oh, that’s terrible. No, it’s good. In fact, someday I’ll see him. I look forward to seeing him. He was very good with me. We had two meeting — we had two summits. We got along great.’
‘I know him better than you do,’ Trump said. ‘I know him better than anybody almost, other than his sister. His sister knows him pretty well. No, I know him well. And I got along with him. You know, I’m not supposed to say I really like him a lot because if I do that, I get killed in the fake news media. But I got along with him very well.’
Denuclearization talks with Kim crumbled during Trump’s first administration when the president refused to get on board with Kim’s request for sanctions relief, in exchange for shuttering North Korea’s primary nuclear complex.
While the current Trump administration has signaled ongoing interest in renewing denuclearization talks with North Korea, Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong said in July that pressure from the White House for North Korea to denuclearize would be interpreted as ‘nothing but a mockery.’
‘The recognition of the irreversible position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state and the hard fact that its capabilities and geopolitical environment have radically changed should be a prerequisite for predicting and thinking everything in the future,’ Kim Yo Jong said in a statement in July published by the North Korean state news agency KCNA.
Meanwhile, Trump also took a shot at ally South Korea hours before Lee’s scheduled arrival at the White House — and weeks after the two agreed to a trade deal.
‘WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there,’ Trump said in a social media post on Monday morning.
Trump told reporters Monday morning his statements stemmed from media reports about raids on churches and on Osan Air Base in July. He told reporters he wasn’t sure how accurate the media reports were, but that he’d question Lee on the matter because he wouldn’t ‘stand for that.’
The Associated Press contributed to this report.