President Donald Trump has confirmed that his highly-anticipated meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will take place in Singapore on June 12. The POTUS announced the news via Twitter .
“We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace,” Trump wrote.
In March 2018, Foreign Policy published a timeline, detailing the highs and the lows of U.S. diplomacy with North Korea . Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un is a historical high. This will make Donald Trump the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader.
From George H.W. Bush, over Jimmy Carter, to Barrack Obama, no President has ever come close to meeting a North Korean leader. President Jimmy Carter visited the country in 1994 but did not meet with the leader at the time. Jo Myong Rok, a senior North Korean military leader visited Washington in 2000, to meet President Clinton.
This resulted in a deal between the two countries, but it broke down under immense pressure from the George W. Bush administration, who had a hard-line stance on North Korea. President Barrack Obama made a few attempts to get Pyongyang to negotiate but did not achieve much, besides increasing sanctions.
This year will probably be remembered as a monumental one in history books, either way. As the BBC reported, Kim pledged “new history” with South Korea.
On April 27, Kim Jong-un became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea since the end of the Korean War. He met with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in. The two shook hands after going back and forth across the border.
Although Donald Trump initially promised to be tough on North Korea and even ridiculed and insulted the country’s leader via Twitter, his approach seems to have changed. A shift in philosophy has, so it seems, done wonders for relations between North Korea and the West.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, as the Inquisitr noted, said U.S. President Donald Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
The culmination of Trump’s efforts will be reached on June 12, which is when the POTUS and Kim Jong-un will meet. The meeting will take place in Singapore. According to Bloomberg , almost 3,000 miles south of Pyongyang, Singapore represents neutral turf for both leaders.
