SINGAPORE—After months of hurled insults and tumultuous diplomacy, the U.S. and North Korea made final preparations for a high-stakes summit that could reshape the security environment in Asia.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose dogged pursuit of nuclear arms has become one of the world’s biggest security challenges, arrived Sunday in this Southeast Asian city-state aboard a Chinese jetliner.
President Donald Trump was expected to land here later in the day, having flown from Canada, where he clashed with important U.S. allies in the Group of Seven industrial nations over trade and tariffs.
The two men are scheduled to meet face to face Tuesday—the first summit between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump, who has used sweeping economic sanctions to press North Korea to abandon its atomic arsenal, played down the likelihood of a rapid solution to the standoff.
Mr. Trump told reporters he expected it “will take a period of time” to achieve a deal. “At a minimum, I do believe, at least we’ll have met each other,” he said. “Hopefully we will have liked each other and we’ll start that process.”
A senior U.S. official cautioned against hopes for a breakthrough in Singapore such as a formal end to the Korean War of 1950-53, which ended in an armistice. “A peace treaty comes way down the road,” the official said.
Senior U.S. and North Korean officials have engaged in multiple rounds of negotiations—in the U.S., North Korea and at the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula—aimed at reaching a denuclearization agreement.
Mike Pompeo, now U.S. Secretary of State, visited Pyongyang twice this spring to hash out parameters of a possible deal with Mr. Kim. A senior North Korean official hand-delivered a letter from Mr. Kim to President Trump earlier this month.
Even so, it remains unclear how much progress has been made toward narrowing the gap between Pyongyang, which prefers a phased approach to disarmament in exchange for concessions from the U.S. and others, and Washington, which wants a rapid surrender of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.
That has raised questions about whether the summit will primarily be one of substance or symbolism.
Even if the summit doesn’t produce a sweeping denuclearization deal or a more modest declaration of amity and goodwill, it will have raised the international profile of Mr. Kim, for years an international pariah, who will have shared the stage with the leader of the free world.
The on-again, off-again summit between Messrs. Trump and Kim, two of the world’s most recognizable and mercurial figures, has electrified the host city, where the summit has been front-page news for a week. On Sunday, crowds gathered near the St. Regis Hotel to catch a glimpse of the arriving North Korean leader.
The North Korean flag fluttered alongside those of the U.S. and Singapore at hotels, restaurants and bars across the city, as police shut down swaths of the commercial district for the coming spectacle.
‘It’s hard to see how a small nation like North Korea could ever garner this kind of international attention had it not been for their nuclear threat’
Mr. Trump’s framing of the summit as a “get-to-know-you” meeting marks a comedown in expectations from late April, when Mr. Trump batted away the notion that he would accept anything less than the U.S.’s long-stated goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.
“It would be very easy for me to make a simple deal and claim victory,” he told reporters at the time. “I don’t want to do that. I want them to get rid of their nukes.”
For North Korea, the aim has been clear and consistent, according to Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to London until he defected to South Korea two years ago.
In a memoir published last month, Mr. Thae wrote that Pyongyang’s goal has long been to be recognized as a de facto nuclear state, like India and Pakistan.
At a meeting of North Korea’s diplomats in Pyongyang in 2016, senior North Korean officials agreed to complete the country’s nuclear program by 2017, followed by a diplomatic detente beginning in 2018.
“The 2018 peace initiative by Kim Jong Un is to present the world with a fait accompli,” Mr. Thae wrote, adding that Pyongyang’s leadership feared that international sanctions would result in “considerable damage” if left in place.
In late April, a week before his first meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the inter-Korean demilitarized zone, Mr. Kim convened an emergency meeting of the central committee of North Korea’s ruling party, declaring the completion of the North’s nuclear program and vowing to work together with other nuclear states to “make positive contributions to the building of the world free from nuclear weapons.”
In May, Mr. Kim turned over three U.S. citizens who had been detained in North Korea for more than a year, and at the end of the month, blew up the site of the country’s six nuclear tests, in an attempt at good faith whose value was questioned by independent experts. At the same time, North Korea has continued to defy sanctions through ship-to-ship oil transfers, while conducting hacking operations against South Korea.
In recent days, North Korean state media has remained reticent on the coming summit, though it has continued to proclaim its willingness to contribute to global disarmament alongside other nuclear powers.
Mr. Trump temporarily called off his meeting with Mr. Kim last month after a pair of statements published by North Korean state media taking aim at remarks by Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Since then, North Korea has lashed out at South Korean conservative politicians as well as journalists who have questioned Pyongyang’s motives in seeking dialogue, but steered clear of any attacks on Mr. Trump’s close advisers.
It didn’t weigh in on remarks from Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani last week that Mr. Kim had begged “on his hands and knees” for the summit.
In recent months, Mr. Kim has embarked on a flurry of diplomacy, meeting Mr. Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping twice each. He has meetings planned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and was set to meet on Sunday with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
“It’s hard to see how a small nation like North Korea could ever garner this kind of international attention had it not been for their nuclear threat,” said Lindsey Ford, a former senior adviser to the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs.
Ms. Ford, now director of political-security affairs for the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, added: “We have to assume other nations could watch what’s happening here and draw the conclusion that behaving badly seems to pay off a whole lot more than playing nice.”
Mr. Trump has dismissed criticism that holding a meeting with Mr. Kim was a concession, saying Saturday: “You know, the haters, they say, ’Oh, you’re giving him a meeting.’ Give me a break, OK? There’s nothing.”
Meanwhile, in Singapore, a city of 5.6 million people that has emerged as the unexpected center of the circus, revelers bashed piñatas on Saturday evening bearing the images of Messrs. Trump and Kim, while impersonators of the two leaders staged photos at a shopping mall in the city center.
Restaurants whipped up themed offerings combining flavors from the U.S. and Korea, while Dennis Rodman, a retired American basketball star who claims close friendships with both leaders, announced his intention to arrive in Singapore.
Two South Korean reporters were ejected from the city-state after allegedly trespassing at the residence of North Korea’s ambassador to Singapore.
At the St. Regis Hotel, dark-suited North Korean officials could be seen arriving on Saturday as police set up security cordons and television cameras encircled the hotel. The North Korean officials, speaking Korean and bearing loyalty badges on their lapels, declined to comment when approached.
On Sunday, Mr. Kim and senior North Korean officials including Mr. Kim’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, stepped off an Air China Boeing 747 in the early afternoon. Mr. Ri is the North Korean diplomat who called Mr. Trump “President Evil” after the U.S. president nicknamed Mr. Kim “Little Rocket Man” in a U.N. speech last year.
—Chun Han Wong contributed to this article.
Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com and Andrew Jeong at andrew.jeong@wsj.com
Bagikan Berita Ini
