President Donald Trump is willing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He told his Korean counterpart at a meeting on Monday. There they discussed peace on the nuclear weapons capabilities of the South Korean Peninsula and Pyongyang.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, elected in June, asked Trump to help establish peace between the two South Koreans when he visited the White House.
“I think you’re the first president to have so much interest in world peace issues and have actually achieved results,” Lee said. “So I hope we can reconcile on the Korean Peninsula and meet Kim Jong-un.”
He added that if he wanted to “play Peacemaker,” he would “actively support” Trump, and that the US president was “the only person who could actually resolve” between North Korea and South Korea, and continued the war technically after the South Korean war ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Lee’s meeting was a major test of South Korea’s new leadership when both Seoul’s trade and military ties with the US were facing pressure from Trump’s “America-first” policy.
After his predecessor and conservative political rival were bounced each, Lee, who took office in June, traveled alongside CEOs and business leaders of several top Korean companies who announced numerous investments during their trip.
South Korea’s Air said it intends to purchase 103 aircraft from Boeing, along with the engine and maintenance programs for GE Aerospace and CFM International, according to a statement.
Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor Group said in a statement Tuesday that it would increase its US investment to $26 billion from the previously planned $21 billion.
Korean companies are expected to invest a total of $150 billion in the US, Lee announced that they attended after the summit at the South Korean and US business roundtables.
Golf Club and Cowboy Hat
Among the bespoke gifts Lee handed over were Trump’s “Make America Great” campaign slogan, TaylorMade golf putters and two cowboy hats embroidered on the “Turtleship” model.
And in a nod to Trump’s love for golf and various golf facilities, Lee joked that Trump’s tower should be built in North Korea. “I can play golf in Pyongyang too.”
Trump quickly agreed, although peaceful efforts and negotiations between South Korea and both North and North Korea were key parts of his turbulent first period.
“I do that, and we’ll talk. He wants to see me,” Trump said of Kim. “We look forward to meeting him. We will improve our relationship. You will help with that.”
It is difficult to say whether such a meeting might move on. North Korean state media claimed that joint military training between the US and South Korea showed Washington’s intention to “occupy” the South Korean peninsula, Reuters reported local time in South Korea on Tuesday morning.
In this early and last year, Kim and his powerful sister Kim Yeon-Jong vowed to strengthen their rhetoric, maintain North Korea’s nuclear weapons and destroy South Korea with nuclear weapons if Pyongyang is attacked.
North Korea is now able to produce 10-20 nuclear weapons a year as the country expands its capabilities, Lee said on Monday after a meeting with Trump without providing evidence.
Hans Christensen, director of the American Federation of Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, said the numbers were “higher than normal, so perhaps (that) means North Korea’s additional uranium enrichment capabilities.”
North Korea’s Test launched two new air defense missiles on Saturday, just two days before the summit between Trump and Lee, according to state media KCNA. And Kim, and potentially his arsenal, is strengthened by the burgeoning relationship with Moscow, with North Korean troops being sent to fight for Russia in the war with Ukraine.
It’s probably not the first time Trump has met Kim – someone He boasts of having a “very good relationship.” “He was very good with me…we did well,” he said Monday.
It wasn’t always the case. There was a great deal of tension in 2017 when North Korea escalated its provocation in missile testing. Then Trump untold Kim as “Little Rocketman” and responded with a tweet that threatened him with “with fire and rage like the world has never seen before.”
However, as the two became pen pals, these tensions cooled down, trading what Trump described as a “love letter,” which ultimately led to a series of unprecedented meetings between the two leaders in 2018 and 2019.
At one meeting in the Unarmed Zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea, in a surprising moment, Kim invited Trump across the border to North Korea.
However, talks ended without a breakthrough, and suddenly concluded in Hanoi in 2019. And subsequent denuclearization or peace negotiation efforts were on fire.
Pyongyang then refused to re-engage with the US, experts said, and resumed testing of weapons, which it seemed to pause along with that dialogue. Although they have not yet begun nuclear tests since 2017, Kim has since vowed to increase the country’s nuclear weapons “exponentially.”
Speaking at an event hosted by the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, South Korea’s Lee warned that the number of North Korea’s nuclear weapons has increased by 2.5 times over the past few years.
The country is currently in the “final stage” of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that can “target far-reaching distances,” adding that “the situation is getting worse.”
And at a Congressional hearing earlier this year, Army General Xavier T. Branson testified that he hopes the United States will make progress in other parts of its arms program this year.
“Next year, (North Korea) is looking forward to further developing the re-entry capabilities of hypersonic and multiple independent targets to complete (government) goals,” Branson said.
