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Just hours before President Donald Trump was set to travel to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, it was still unclear whether North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would accept the president’s impromptu invitation to meet there for a handshake.
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On Sunday morning in South Korea, Trump said that Kim “very much wants to” meet, and that the two countries are “trying to work it out. Both want to do it.”
“Very short, it would be very short, virtually a handshake,” Trump said. “But that’s okay. A handshake means a lot.”
Trump has even raised the possibility of stepping across the border into North Korea – something no previous U.S. president has done.
“Sure, I would. I would. I’d feel very comfortable doing that. I would have no problem,” Trump said earlier in his Asia trip.
The two leaders have met on two occasions. Their most recent meeting in February in Hanoi, Vietnam, failed to produce an agreement toward the goal of North Koreas’ denuclearization.
Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo
Trump announced yesterday that he would be traveling to the DMZ during his visit to South Korea and issued an impromptu Twitter invitation to the North Korean leader to have a brief visit and share a handshake.
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(?)!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2019
Since that time, a senior administration official said that the governments of the United States, North Korea and South Korea have been in communication to prepare for the prospective meeting.
In remarks Sunday morning at a breakfast with Korean business leaders, President Trump suggested that a meeting was likely to happen.
“I understand they want to meet and I’d love to say hello,” Trump said.
Asked by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl in a press conference Saturday if it will be a bad sign if the North Korean leader doesn’t take him up on his offer to meet, the president said it would not.
“No,” Trump told Karl. “Of course, I thought of that because I know if he didn’t, everybody is going to say, ‘Oh, he was stood up by Chairman Kim.’ No, I understood that.”
The president went on to say that the North Korean leader must follow him on Twitter, because U.S. officials “got a call very quickly” after he sent out his tweet.
The president said if the meeting does happen, it would only be a brief one.
“We’ll see each other for two minutes,” Trump said. “That will be fine.”
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