President Donald Trump announced that he will be meeting with North Korean President Kim Jong Un in “early June” — or even “before that.” He made the announcement during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he has been meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Trump also commented that North and South Korea have his “blessing” to end the Korean war, which has technically been ongoing since it began in 1950.
At the news conference, Trump discussed the situation in North Korea, and announced that a plan was in the works to meet with Kim Jong Un.
“We will probably be, depending on various meetings and conversations, we’ll be having meetings with Kim Jong Un very soon," he said. "That will be taking place probably in early June, or a little before that. Assuming things go well. It’s possible things won’t go well and we won’t have the meeting.”
"We'll be having meetings with Kim Jong Un very soon. That will be taking place probably in early June," Trump says. https://t.co/ZIaB0fsTAe pic.twitter.com/L4PIeENXpG
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 17, 2018
Trump also hyped talks between North and South Korea — which he took full credit for.
“North Korea is coming along. South Korea has plans to meet with North Korea to see if they can end the war, and they have my blessing on that," Trump said. "And they’ve been very generous that without us, and without me in particular, I guess, you would have to say that wouldn’t be discussing everything, that the Olympics would have been a failure. Instead it was a great success. They would have had a real problem. But, as you know, North Korea participated in the Olympics and it made it, clearly it was quite an Olympics, it was quite a success. That would not have happened.”
Trump noted that technically, the war never ended: “People don’t realize the Korean War has not ended. It is going on right now. They are going to discuss the end to the war.”
The Korean Armistice Agreement, signed on July 27, 1953, may have ended the day-to-day battle, but it effectively just hit "pause" on the war itself. It was signed as a temporary measure by the U.S. and North Korea, until a more formal peace treaty could be agreed upon.
The armistice calls for a suspension of open hostilities, a demilitarization zone, and a system for exchanging prisoners. The North and South agreed to never “execute any hostile act within, from, or against the demilitarized zone.”
