Kim Jong Un Has Agreed To Resume Dialog With The US
- 22.09.2025, 15:30
If the White House drops the demand to give up nuclear weapons.
Ahead of Donald Trump's October visit to South Korea, local media speculate whether the US president will try to meet the North Korean leader as he did in 2019. Trump himself said in August that he would like to meet Kim Jong-un this year, with whom he said he has a "very good relationship." But Kim himself finds no interest in rapprochement with the United States - especially after he strolled in a Beijing parade three weeks ago with leaders of regimes that support him.
Negotiations with the United States are only possible if Washington "gives up its delusional obsession with denuclearization," the Financial Times quoted the Korean Central News Agency, which covered Kim's speech to the DPRK's Supreme People's Assembly, as saying. In that case, there was "no reason" not to hold talks, the North Korean leader said, noting that he had "fond memories" of Trump.
The two met three times during Trump's first term as president, but no talks yielded any results. Kim has since hardened his stance, abandoning the idea of uniting the two Koreas, which, albeit theoretically, his father and grandfather had supported for some 70 years. "We will not sit down at the negotiating table with South Korea and do nothing together," he reiterated Sunday. Kim has also continued to develop his weapons program, including nuclear weapons, and in this he has been aided in recent years by Vladimir Putin, to whom he has sent some 14,000 troops for the war against Ukraine. "We will never lay down our nuclear weapons," Kim declared. - The world knows well what the US does after forcing others to give up their nuclear program and disarm."
It will not be easy for the US to recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, said Kim Jae-joon, a professor at Sogang University in Seoul and a former adviser to the South Korean government. Pyongyang is much less isolated now than it was during Trump's first term, he added:
Kim seems to have an advantage now because he has China and Russia on his side. Kim doesn't feel the need to meet with Trump just for a photo op.