US President Donald Trump said Monday he hoped to meet again with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, possibly this year, as he held White House talks with South Korea’s dovish new leader that got off awkwardly.
Hours before President Lee Jae Myung arrived for his long-planned first visit to the White House, Trump took to social media to denounce what he said was a “Purge or Revolution” in South Korea, apparently over raids that involved churches.
Forty minutes into an Oval Office meeting in which Lee profusely praised Trump, the US leader dismissed his own sharply worded rebuke, saying, “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding” as “there is a rumor going around.”
Trump said he believed he was on the same page on North Korea as Lee, a progressive who supports diplomacy over confrontation.
Trump, who met Kim Jong Un three times in his first term, hailed his relationship with the young totalitarian and said he knew him “better than anybody, almost, other than his sister.”
“Someday I’ll see him. I look forward to seeing him. He was very good with me,” Trump told reporters, saying he hoped the talks would take place this year.
Trump contended that North Korea has been firing fewer rockets since he returned to the White House on January 20.
The president has boasted that he has solved seven wars in as many months back in the job — a claim that is contested — but had been quiet on North Korea despite the unusually personal diplomacy during his 2017-2021 tenure.
Trump once said that he and Kim “fell in love.” Their meetings reduced tensions but failed to produce a lasting agreement.
Pyongyang rebuffed overtures from Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, which Trump said showed they did not respect him.
But Kim has also been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean troops to fight.
North Korea has dug in and refused any talk of ending its nuclear weapons program.
‘Trump Tower’ in Pyongyang
Lee, a former labor rights lawyer who has criticized the US military in the past, immediately flattered his host and said Trump has made the United States “not a keeper of peace, but a maker of peace.”
“I look forward to your meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un and construction of Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf” there, Lee told him.
He even cited propaganda from North Korea that denounced South Korea by noting that Pyongyang said the relationship with Trump was better.
Kim “will be waiting for you,” Lee told him.
Lee was elected in June after the impeachment of the more hawkish Yoon Suk Yeol, who briefly imposed martial law.
The raids denounced by Trump likely referred in part to investigations surrounding Yoon’s conservative allies.
Seeking to buy base
Lee spoke through an interpreter, breaking the pace of Trump, who does not hesitate to pick fights with his guests.
Trump, who frequently accuses European allies of freeloading off the United States, made clear he would press hard for greater compensation by South Korea over the 28,500 US troops in the country.
He suggested the United States could seek to take over base land, an idea likely to enrage Lee’s brethren on the South Korean left.
“We spent a lot of money building a fort, and there was a contribution made by South Korea, but I would like to see if we could get rid of the lease and get ownership of the land where we have a massive military base,” Trump said.
He also spoke bluntly about one of South Korea’s most delicate issues: so-called “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery during Japan’s 1910-1945 rule.
The South Korean left has historically been outspoken about Japan’s legacy, although Lee visited Tokyo on his way to Washington, a highly symbolic stop praised by Trump.
Japan had agreed to compensate comfort women but the deal was criticized by survivors who questioned Tokyo’s sincerity.