President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their second summit at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb. 27, 2019. (Joyce Boghosian/The White House)
Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s staff are reportedly considering efforts to engage in dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Two unnamed sources familiar with the discussions said the proposed plan could repair Trump’s relationship with Kim, which was strained during his first term, the Reuters news agency reported Wednesday. However, no final decision has been made by the incoming president.
During his first year in office in 2017, Trump warned the communist regime would be met with “fire and fury” if it continued to threaten the United States.
Despite that initial rhetoric, Trump and Kim made history the following year when they met in Singapore for the first-ever summit between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. The White House described the meeting as an “epochal event” aimed at building a foundation for future peace talks on the peninsula.
The leaders held a second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019, but those talks collapsed without a formal agreement after disputes over sanctions relief for Pyongyang.
Four months later, Trump and Kim met at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. In a symbolic gesture, Trump briefly crossed into North Korea, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to do so.
However, North Korea continued its ballistic missile testing during Trump’s presidency. The regime fired two short-range ballistic missiles on May 9, 2019, roughly seven weeks before the leaders’ DMZ meeting.
Trump dismissed concerns over North Korea’s launches, even after the regime fired two more short-range ballistic missiles on Aug. 2, 2019.
“There may be a United Nations violation, but Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust …,” Trump wrote on social media the next day.
Tensions remain high on the peninsula. North Korea has conducted 45 ballistic missile launches across 12 days of testing so far this year, including an intercontinental ballistic weapon fired Oct. 31 that flew approximately 620 miles at a lofted trajectory.
North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency criticized Trump’s diplomacy earlier this year, saying it failed to deliver “any substantial positive change.” A July 23 report by KCNA said Trump has “tried to reflect the special personal relations” between the two leaders but “the foreign policy of state and personal feelings must be strictly distinguished.”
Kim, in a speech in Pyongyang on Nov. 22, reiterated his belief that North Korea has “already gone to every length in negotiations with the U.S.,” according to a KCNA report the following day.
