“The entire world is
watching the historic summit between (North Korea) and the United States of
America, and thanks to your sincere efforts ... we were able to complete the
preparations for the historic summit,” Kim told Lee through an interpreter.
Trump is set to meet with Lee on Monday.
Trump has said he hopes to make a legacy-defining deal for
the North to give up its nuclear weapons, though he has recently sought to
minimize expectations, saying more than one meeting may be necessary. The North
has faced crippling diplomatic and economic sanctions as it has advanced
development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Experts believe the North is on the brink of being able to
target the entire US mainland with its nuclear-armed missiles, and while
there’s deep skepticism that Kim will quickly give up those hard-won nukes,
there’s also some hope that diplomacy can replace the animosity between the US
and the North.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sung
Kim, the US ambassador to the Philippines who has taken the lead on policy
negotiations with the North, will hold a “working group” with a North Korean
delegation to discuss final preparations for the meeting.
The motorcade carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
leaves the Istana, or Presidential Palace, in Singapore on Sunday on June 10,
2018, after his meeting with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. (AP
Photo)
The North Korean autocrat’s every move will be followed by
3,000 journalists who have converged on Singapore, and by gawkers around the world,
up until he shakes hands with Trump on Tuesday. It’s a reflection of the
intense global curiosity over Kim’s sudden turn to diplomacy in recent months
after a slew of North Korean nuclear and missile tests last year raised serious
fears of war.
But it was only Monday morning in North Korea that the
government news agency reported that Kim was in Singapore, had met with the
prime minister and would meet Trump on Tuesday. One dispatch by the Korean
Central News Agency said North Korea and the US would exchange “wide-ranging
and profound views” on establishing new relations, building a “permanent and
durable peace-keeping mechanism,” achieving denuclearization and “other issues
of mutual concern, as required by the changed era.”
It’s Kim’s pursuit of nuclear weapons that gives his meeting
with Trump such high stakes. The meeting was initially meant to rid North Korea
of its nuclear weapons, but the talks have been portrayed by Trump in recent
days more as a get-to-know-you session. Trump has also raised the possibility
of further summits and an agreement ending the Korean War by replacing the
armistice signed in 1953 with a peace treaty. China and South Korea would have
to sign off on any legal treaty.
It’s unclear what Trump and Kim might decide Tuesday.
Pyongyang has said it is willing to deal away its entire
nuclear arsenal if the United States provides it with reliable security
assurances and other benefits. But many say this is highly unlikely, given how
hard it has been for Kim to build his program and given that the weapons are
seen as the major guarantee to his holding onto unchecked power.
Any nuclear deal will hinge on North Korea’s willingness to
allow unfettered outside inspections of the country’s warheads and nuclear
fuel, much of which is likely kept in a vast complex of underground facilities.
Past nuclear deals have crumbled over North Korea’s reluctance to open its
doors to outsiders.
Another possibility from the summit is a deal to end the
Korean War, which North Korea has long demanded, presumably, in part, to get US
troops off the Korean Peninsula and, eventually, pave the way for a North
Korean-led unified Korea.
