President Trump has offered to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone on the border with South Korea “just to shake his hand and say Hello.” In a Saturday tweet, Trump seemed to address his overture directly to Kim: “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(?)!” he wrote. Trump, currently in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit, went on to praise the DMZ as a “real border.” “By the way, when you talk about a wall when you talk about a border, that’s what they call a border. Nobody goes through that border,” he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
Trump is scheduled to arrive in South Korea later Saturday before flying out on Sunday. His apparent invitation to Kim comes after America’s top nuclear envoy said Friday that Washington was prepared to move denuclearization talks ahead in a “simultaneous and parallel” manner with Pyongyang. U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun was quoted by Yonhap news agency as telling his South Korean counterpart, Lee Do-hoon, that the U.S. is prepared for “constructive talks” with North Korea to make further progress with the commitments made in the first Trump-Kim summit.
