President Donald Trump is trying to reconnect with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as his other diplomatic efforts sputter, according to a report.
The 80-year-old president, who once said that he and Kim “fell in love” through their letter exchanges, has been pressing his aides to arrange a meeting with the brutal despot, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing U.S. officials.
Trump is hoping to resurrect his unsuccessful first-term bid to persuade Kim, 42, to abandon North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the Journal. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November, which will be held in Shenzhen, China, could serve as a backdrop for a rendezvous.
Trump appears determined to get the high-stakes meeting on the calendar, the Journal reports, bucking the approach of most presidents, who have refused to meet Kim without preconditions.
In fact, the president appeared to court Kim when he announced on Sunday that he planned to “substantially reduce” America’s joint military exercises with South Korea, saying the exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”
“These exercises presented him an opportunity to do something concrete to show Kim he is serious about meeting,” Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told the Journal.
The president’s apparent eagerness to get back in a room with Kim suggests he is scrambling for a headline-making foreign policy triumph as his promised victory in Iran remains out of reach, the Journal reported.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During his first term, Trump held three groundbreaking summits with Kim, but their bromance ultimately failed to deliver a hoped-for deal requiring North Korea to halt or dismantle its nuclear weapons program in return for sanctions relief.
The country’s nuclear arsenal has, in fact, only become more advanced and capable of reaching the U.S. homeland, and analysts are worried that Trump’s attempt at diplomacy with Kim could backfire.
“It appeases yet another despotic dictator based on a misperception that a personal relationship will actually achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives,” Bruce Klingner, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency officer in the Koreas, told the Journal.
Analysts are concerned that Kim would enter any new talks with a stronger negotiating position than during previous summits, and that Trump could end up striking a deal that would hurt regional allies.
North Korea has deepened ties with China, which supports its struggling economy, while Russia has also provided economic aid in exchange for thousands of North Korean troops deployed to back Russian forces in Ukraine.
