US President Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday that a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will not take place during his visit to South Korea this week. Trump made the remark hours after arriving in the southeastern city of Gyeongju to attend Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gatherings and a summit with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
"I know Kim Jong-un very well. We get along very well," he said at the start of his summit with Lee at the Gyeongju National Museum, Yonhap News Agency reported. "We really weren't able to work out timing."
Trump's visit to South Korea from Wednesday to Thursday had sparked speculation he could meet with Kim to resume personal diplomacy over the North's nuclear weapons program. The two leaders met three times during Trump's first term in Singapore in June 2018, in Vietnam in February 2019 and in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom in June that year.
Panmunjom had been floated as the most likely venue should a fourth meeting materialise. "I know you are officially at war, but we will see what we can do to get that all straightened out," Trump said, referring to the 1950-53 Korean War having ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.
"We'll have other visits, and we'll work very hard with Kim Jong-un and with everybody on getting things straightened out because that makes sense," he added. The Trump-Kim meetings had been aimed at yielding an agreement on denuclearizing the North in exchange for U.S. concessions, including sanctions relief, but broke down over differences on how to match their steps.
Prior to arriving in South Korea, Trump had repeatedly expressed his openness to meeting again with Kim, indicating he could even extend his stay in the country if necessary. The North has yet to publicly respond to the overtures, and in a potential sign of its disinterest, test-fired nuclear-capable cruise missiles the previous day.