Donald Trump assured Wednesday that he would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un before the end of the year. “Yes, I will meet him,” replied the American president, when asked about this while he was showing some journalists around construction sites in progress at the White House.
The meeting could, according to several observers, take place in November on the sidelines of the Apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in China.
“57 nuclear weapons”
The 80-year-old billionaire also delivered an official and rarely precise estimate of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, estimating that the country was equipped with “57 nuclear weapons”. “This should never have happened. (…) If I had been president, I would not have allowed it,” added the Republican leader, who repeated that he got along “very well” despite everything with the North Korean leader. Since his first term (2017-2021), Donald Trump has prided himself on having a special relationship with Kim Jong-unwhose country is considered a major threat to the security of the United States by American intelligence.
This relationship came back to the forefront when the American president, to everyone’s surprise, decided on Sunday to cut short joint military exercises with South Korea, which he said sent “a totally inappropriate and hostile signal” to Pyongyang. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un met three times during the first term of the American president. Before him, no American head of state had ever met a North Korean leader.
