N. Korea summit to take place in Singapore: Yonhap

[Yonhap News Photo]

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump announced that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place in Singapore June 12.

"The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th," Trump tweeted. "We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!" Trump's tweet came just hours after three American citizens were brought home from imprisonment in the communist country.

Their release cleared a major obstacle for the upcoming meeting, which will be the first between sitting leaders of the two countries. Trump and Kim are expected to discuss the dismantlement of the regime's nuclear weapons program.

Trump's aim is the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) of North Korea. Kim has repeatedly expressed his commitment to denuclearization, but it's unclear on what terms. The historic summit comes on the heels of a series of meetings between the North Korean leader, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The flurry of diplomacy set in this year after Kim reached out to the South over his country's participation in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February. Just last year tensions had soared as Trump and Kim exchanged threats and personal insults over the North's testing of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, which invited growing international sanctions against the regime.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Pyongyang Tuesday to fine-tune the details of the summit. He met with Kim for the second time following a meeting in April. Kim released the three Korean-American detainees, who had been charged with espionage or "hostile acts" against the regime, and Pompeo flew back with them to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, early Thursday.
(Yonhap)

Lim Chang-won cwlim34@ajunews.com

N. Korea summit to take place in Singapore: Yonhap

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