President Donald J. Trump said he would reach out to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, raising the possibility of rekindling their bromance diplomacy five years after their first round of negotiations drew global attention but did little to reduce Mr. Kim’s growing nuclear threat.
“He liked me and I got along with him,” Mr. Trump said during an interview with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, after saying that he would reach out to Mr. Kim again in his second term. “He is not a religious zealot. He happens to be a smart guy.”
Mr. Trump’s comments, aired on Thursday night, were the first time he has expressed an intent to reopen diplomacy with Mr. Kim since taking office on Monday. During his first term, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim made history when they held the first summit between their nations, which remain technically at war. But their relationship petered out after their three high-profile meetings failed to yield any progress.
It is unclear whether or how Mr. Kim, emboldened by a stronger alliance with Russia and his own country’s military advances, will respond to the overtures this time around. Since Mr. Trump last met Mr. Kim five years ago, North Korea’s missile capabilities have expanded and he could demand a bigger price for making concessions on his nuclear program, analysts say.
Mr. Trump had voiced interest in the North Korean leader during his campaign, saying at one point that “it’s nice to get along when somebody has a lot of nuclear weapons.” Hours after his inauguration, he also told reporters that Mr. Kim was “a nuclear power,” a shift from Washington’s longstanding refusal to recognize North Korea as such.
Officials in South Korea, a U.S. ally gripped by a domestic political crisis following the impeachment of its leader, have feared Mr. Trump’s return might put the Korean Peninsula on a diplomatic roller coaster ride again.
During his first term, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim first exchanged personal insults and threats of nuclear war. They then shook hands and held three meetings between 2018 and 2019. At one point, Mr. Trump declared on social media that there was “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea” and that he “fell in love” with Mr. Kim.
Those talks, however, ended without an agreement on how to roll back North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs or when the United States should ease sanctions imposed on the country. Mr. Kim vowed not to engage Washington in dialogue again and has doubled down on building and testing nuclear-capable missiles.
Now, South Korean analysts and officials fear that Mr. Trump might make a deal with Mr. Kim in which North Korea would give up its long-range missiles, but not all its nuclear weapons, in exchange for sanctions relief.
Mr. Trump’s recent statement describing North Korea as a nuclear power clashed with a long-held agreement between Washington and Seoul that North Korea should never be accepted as such.
“We cannot grant North Korea nuclear power status,” South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement after Mr. Trump’s comment.
Despite Mr. Trump’s flattering comments about Mr. Kim, it was unclear whether the dictator would warm to the idea of a renewed courtship. Following the collapse of the first round of meetings, Mr. Kim has championed a new “multipolar” global order, signing a mutual defense pact with Moscow last year and sending weapons and an estimated 12,000 troops to help Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Despite suffering heavy casualties in the war against Ukraine, North Korea was preparing to send more troops to Russia, the South Korean military said on Friday.
China has long been the only major buffer between North Korea and American-led international efforts to tame its regime’s military ambitions. In return for helping Russia in its war against Ukraine, Mr. Kim has recruited Moscow as another major ally to shield his country from U.S. pressure.
North Korea had not commented on Mr. Trump’s election or inauguration until on Wednesday, when its state media carried a two-sentence report.
The regime did, however, launch missiles off its east coast in the days before the inauguration. And it is preparing to launch more missiles, according to South Korea’s military, including long-range ballistic missiles powerful enough to reach the continental United States, which tend to annoy American defense officials the most.
North Korean state media reported Friday that the nation’s parliament had this week adopted budgets for the year that would ”ensure the acceleration of the significant change in the national defense capabilities.”
Mr. Kim will likely wait until a Workers’ Party meeting in June or another parliamentary gathering in September to react to Mr. Trump’s overture, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
“He will react after gauging the Trump administration’s seriousness, intention and calculations behind its North Korea approach,” Mr. Hong said.
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