Trump says he wants to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong one this year

Washington/Seoul, August 25.

“I would like to meet him this year,” Trump told journalists at the Oval office while welcoming the new president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, to the White House for the first time. “I hope to meet with Kim Jong a in the appropriate future.”

AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Archive

Despite ensuring a commercial agreement in July that saved exports from South Korea toughest from US tariffs, the two parties continue to fight for nuclear energy, military spending and the details of an agreement that included $ 350 billion in promised investments of South Korea in the United States.

After meeting with Trump, Lee attended a business forum with senior US officials and CEO of South Korean and American companies.

To coincide with the visit, the South Korean aircraft carrier, Korean Air, announced an order for 103 Boeing aircraft, the largest order in the history of the airline.

Kim ignores Trump’s calls

North Korea did not immediately respond to a request for comments on Trump’s comments. His state media later said that the joint military exercises of the South Korea.

Since Trump’s inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump’s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he made during his 2017-2021 mandate in office, which did not produce any agreement to stop the North Korean nuclear program.

In the Oval office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a May visit of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post through Getty Images

Lee spoke of golf and produced praise about the decoration and peace of the Republican President, telling journalists before he had read the memoirs of the 1987 president, “Trump: the art of the agreement”, to prepare.

“I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only nation divided in the world, so you can meet with Kim Jong Un, build a world of Trump (real estate complex) in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so you can really play a role like a world historical peacemaker,” Lee told Trump, speaking in Corean.

Lee’s office said he and Trump discussed naval construction and murder attempts against both men. Lee also invited Trump to attend the summit of the Association of the Economic Cooperation of Asia and the Pacific (APEC) in October, and suggested that the US president tried to meet Kim during the trip, Lee’s office added.

“Despite the mass sanctions imposed to dissuade North Korea, the result has been the continuous development of nuclear weapons and missiles,” Lee said during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington after the summit.

He said that North Korea now has the ability to build from 10 to 20 nuclear eyelets per year, and only needs to improve a re -entry vehicle to carry those eyes in its largest ballistic missiles that can reach the United States.

Difficult problems

The economy of South Korea depends largely on the United States, with Washington subscribing its safety with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a “money machine” that takes advantage of US military protection.

“I think we have an agreement” in El Comercio, Trump told reporters. “They had some problems with that, but we attached to our weapons.” He did not explain, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Trump said that while he was sitting with Lee, he would raise “Intel” that he had received about investigations from South Korea who said they were heading to the churches and a military base. The White House did not respond to a request for more information.

This month, the Seoul police assaulted the Sarang Jeil church, headed by an evangelical preacher who led protests that backed the ejected predecessor of Lee Yoon Suk Yeol.

In July, prosecutors who investigate Yoon’s martial law declaration complied with a search warrant in the Korean part of a military base operated together with US officials who said that American troops and materials were not subject to the search.

The extreme right movement of South Korea, especially Evangelical Christians and supporters of Yoon, sees him as a victim of communist persecution.

Trump was expected to press Lee to commit to more defense expenses, even towards the maintenance of the 28,500 US troops in South Korea.

When asked if he would reduce those numbers to give the United States more regional flexibility, Trump said: “I don’t mean that now”, but maybe Seoul should give the property of the United States of the “land where we have the strong strong”, an apparent reference to Camp Humphreys, a garrison from the US army in South Korea.

Before the meeting, Lee told journalists that it would be difficult to accept American demands adopt such “flexibility”, a reference to the use of US forces for a broader range of operations, including threats related to China.

(David Brunnstrom report, Idrees Ali, Steve Holland, Trevor Hunnicutt and David Shepardson in Washington and Josh Smith, Joyce Lee, Hyun Joo Jin, Ju-Min Park and Jack Kim in Seoul Perry, Rod Nickel)