[AP/Yonhap News Photo]
WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump said he plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un next month or in early June to "hopefully" reach a deal on denuclearizing the regime.
Trump made the remarks at a cabinet meeting where he also acknowledged the two sides were in talks to prepare for the meeting.
"North Korea, by the way, as you've probably seen -- and we've been in touch with North Korea -- we'll be meeting with them sometime in May or early June," he said. "And I think there'll be great respect paid by both parties and hopefully we'll be able to make a deal on the de-nuking of North Korea. They've said so; we've said so. Hopefully, it will be a relationship that's much different than it's been for many, many years."
"This should have been done by other presidents and they've decided they didn't do it," Trump said. "They couldn't have done it. But it would have been a lot easier if it were done five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. A lot easier than now. But we have a meeting that is being set up with North Korea. So that will be very exciting, I think, for the world. I think it's going to be a very exciting thing for the world."
Trump also talked about the recently renegotiated free trade agreement between South Korea and the U.S., saying he thinks it's going to be "a very fair deal."
"We're close to finishing a deal with South Korea, which was a horrible deal," he said. "It was going to give us 200,000 jobs. Well, that didn't exactly happen. It gave them 200,000 jobs. We lost jobs. And it was a horrible deal, and that's being renegotiated. And we have a long way to go, but we've made a tremendous progress."
"And as I said, the North Korea and South Korea situation, which complicates it -- the deal that we have with South Korea, I think, is going to be -- I think it's going to be a very fair deal. We want a fair deal. And we don't have fair deals," Trump said.
(Yonhap)
reporter
Lim Chang-won
cwlim34@ajunews.com
