Trump is receptive to contacts with North Korean leader, White House says

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump would welcome communications with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after having had friendly relations with Kim during his first term, the White House said on June 11.

“The President remains receptive to correspondence with Kim Jong Un,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

She was responding to a report by Seoul-based NK News, a website that monitors North Korea, that the North’s delegation at the United Nations in New York had repeatedly refused to accept a letter from Mr Trump to Mr Kim.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim

held three summits

during Mr Trump’s 2017-2021 first term and exchanged a number of what Mr Trump called “beautiful” letters. In June 2019, Mr Trump briefly stepped into North Korea from the demilitarised zone (DMZ) with South Korea.

Little progress was made, however, at reining in North Korea’s nuclear programme, and Mr Trump acknowledged in March that Pyongyang is a “nuclear power”.

Since Mr Trump's first-term summitry with Mr Kim ended, North Korea has

shown no interest

in returning to talks.

The attempts at rapprochement come after

the election in South Korea

of a new president, Mr Lee Jae-myung, who has pledged to reopen dialogue with North Korea.

As a gesture of engagement on June 11, Mr Lee suspended South Korean loudspeakers blasting music and messages into the North at the DMZ along their shared border.

Analysts say, however, that engaging North Korea will likely be more difficult for both Mr Lee and Mr Trump than it was in the US President's first term.

Since then, North Korea has significantly expanded its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, and developed close ties with Russia through direct support for Moscow's war in Ukraine, to which Pyongyang has provided both troops and weaponry.

Mr Kim said in a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country will always stand with Moscow, state media reported on June 12. REUTERS