On Thursday, President Donald Trump praised North Korea’s Kim Jong-un for his efforts to denuclearize the peninsula before the U.S. President’s term ends in 2021.
Earlier that day, a South Korean envoy said that the North Korean leader had told him he wanted to denuclearize his country during President Trump’s term in office.
“Just moments ago they put on that he said very strongly that we want to denuclearize North Korea during President Trump’s tenure … just said it, just said it,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Montana.
On Thursday morning, Trump also commended Kim for his declaration and thanked him. “Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump. Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!” the President’s tweet read.
A day earlier, Kim met with South Korean officials demonstrating willingness to cooperate with the White House in nuclear negotiations and to set a timeline for denuclearization.
South Korean envoy Chung Eui-yong, who was in Pyongyang, said Kim had “strongly expressed his will to take more active steps for denuclearization” but only if the United States matched those efforts, conveying the North Korean leader’s frustration that his commitment to nuclear disarmament was not met accordingly by the U.S.
“He made it clear that his trust in President Trump remains — and will remain — unchanged, even though there have recently been some difficulties in negotiations between the North and the United States,” Chung further said, according to The New York Times.
The latest developments come after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned trip to North Korea was canceled last month due to what the President said was insufficient “progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
During a June 12 summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim discussed the denuclearization of the peninsula, but no significant efforts have been made in that respect since then. North Korea did, however, stop conducting missile and nuclear tests and recently returned the remains of soldiers who died in the Korean War.
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