Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un summit: a complete guide
The much anticipated on-again off-again summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un is on again. Here’s all you need to know.
The much anticipated on-again off-again summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, the first between a US president and any North Korean leader, is on again and will take place today at 11am AEST, in Singapore. Our Washington correspondent Cameron Stewart is in Singapore and we’ll be live blogging from the event. In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know about the summit.
What exactly do they hope to achieve?
Six million dollar question that, and one which noone can really answer, particularly the main contenders. Originally the Trump camp was declaring that nothing short of North Korea’s full denuclearisation would mean a failed summit. However after Kim Jong-un reacted badly to the suggestion that Washington was after a Libya solution to his nuclear weapons (he didn’t like the implied suggestion that he would go the same way as Muammar Gaddafi, and who can blame him?) and Mr Trump cancelled the summit, both sides have become more diplomatic and less certain of what a meeting may achieve.
Washington has admitted that the summit almost certainly won’t conclude with any definite agreement over denuclearisation and it may take more meetings before there is any real result.
In between antagonising fellow G7 leaders in Canada over the weekend, Mr Trump told reporters he expected it “will take a period of time” to achieve any kind of deal with Mr Kim. “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 US official also cautioned against hopes for a formal end to the Korean War of 1950-53. “A peace treaty comes way down the road,” the official told the Wall St Journal.
For their part, the North Koreans said they were aiming for a “permanent and durable peace mechanism.”
In its first official confirmation of the meeting today, the North’s state mendia said the two leaders would discuss “the issue of realizing the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and other issues of mutual concern, as required by the changed era.”
But what does North Korea really want?
According to Thae Yong-ho, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to London until he defected to South Korea two years ago, this summit isn’t a sudden change of heart by Mr Kim but is all part of the North’s long term plan.
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, he said.
“The 2018 peace initiative by Kim Jong-un is to present the world with a fait accompli,” Mr Thae wrote. He said the regime was concerned that international sanctions would result in “considerable damage” if they were left in place.
But Mr Kim also needs to appease Beijing, his only real ally, which has become increasingly impatient with his bellicose aggression and nuclear taunts. As Holman Jenkins writes in The Australian, if China ever gets tired of his regime’s existence, the lights go out in Pyongyang overnight.
Still, it’s a good look for Kim isn’t it?
It’s a triumph for him. His father Kim Jong-il long wanted to have a summit with Washington but only got as far as meeting former US President Bill Clinton, and that was some years after Mr Clinton left office.
What’s more, since he got on the peace path, Mr Kim become quite the diplomatic traveller, meeting both South Korean leader Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee points out just by bringing the American president to the table means a success for Mr Kim.
“To the extent that Kim Jong-un has already gone from international pariah to being normalized internationally, you have to say that he’s had some success here,” he said.
Where exactly will the summit take place?
The venue is the Capella Singapore, a five star hotel on the island of Sentosa, described as a “tropical island off a tropical island.” Sentosa - whose name is a Malay word for peace and tranquillity - actually has a sinister past as a Japanese prisoner of war camp and a massacre site where Chinese men were shot and thrown into the sea by Japanese troops. Before that, it was a pirate haven, known as Pulau Blakang Mati, or the “island behind death.”
Today, of course, it’s been taken over by resorts and theme parks and sold by the Singaporeans as ‘the State of Fun.’
The fact that it is small and easily managed was a big selling point, as was the fact it can easily be cordoned off for security.
Ah yes, security. Total nightmare isn’t it?
It certainly is, particularly as Kim Jong-un is terrified that someone’s going to try to assassinate him. I mean, did you see those pictures of his praetorian guard trotting alongside his black bullet proof Mercedes (accompanied by 19 other limousines) as he arrived at the luxury St Regis Hotel in Singapore? If you didn’t, here they are during his South Korea trip earlier this year.
Security concerns are partly why Singapore, with its draconian laws, is the perfect host city. The city is in lockdown, of course, and was already showing its muscle even before the two leaders arrived on Sunday night. On Friday, two South Korean journalists found trespassing in the North Korean ambassador’s residence were arrested. And a Kim Jong-un impersonator from Hong Kong posted on social media that he had been detained and questioned for several hours on his arrival in the island city-state.
Wait, Kim Jong-un thinks he's going to be assassinated?
Well, yes. As Chae Kyou-chir, chief executive of Top Guard, a prominent South Korean security and protection firm points out: “Kim Jong-un is revered as a god-like being in his country, while outside the North, he’s been subject to hostility because of the way his regime is run, and that’s enough to always cause safety concerns for his officials.”
As well as bullet proof cars and his jogging security guards, Mr Kim is bringing his own food to Singapore, presumably to ensure he can’t be poisoned.
And just to make certain his flight wouldn’t be tracked, his plane took off from Pyongyang toward China before changing flight path and flight number mid journey and turning toward Singapore.
In April, North Korean security staff wiped down with disinfectant the chair Kim would be sitting in while signing the visitor’s book at the Peace House in the border village of Panmunjom during his historic meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. They did the same for the visitor’s book, and even the pen that Mr Kim eventually did not use.
Other security personnel were spotted using equipment to sweep the room for explosives or recording devices.
Who’s paying for all this?
Probably not Pyongyang, if recent trips are anything to go by. According to The New York Times, North Korea presses other governments to pay its expenses when officials travel abroad. During the Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea in February, South Korea paid the AUD$300,000 bill for the North Korean delegation plus an additional $160,000 for a delegation to attend the Paralympic Games.
Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen has said his government would stump up some of Mr Kim’s costs.
So back to the meeting. Has Kim done anything to prove his good will?
He did close down the Punggye-ri nuclear test site last month, blowing up tunnels, sealing the entrances and removing test site facilities and equipment. However the site was pretty well disabled already, due to the collapse of a cavity inside the mountain after the last blast there in September, Chinese scientists claim. Chinese seismologists also warned that another blast in the same spot and with similar yield to the last test could cause “environmental catastrophe.”
So, maybe not such a serious move then.
Also, while Mr Kim also pledged not to carry out further long-range missile tests, he made no mention of shorter-range missiles that would be capable of striking US allies in South Korea and Japan.
Senator Bob Menendez points out that getting a nuclear deal with North Korea will not be the hard point, noting that several previous presidents were able to strike deals only to see them fall apart. The test will be whether a deal has “verifiable elements of a denuclearisation,” to prove whether the North has dismantled its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
How is Trump preparing for the meeting?
Well, he’s ... um, he’s ... er.. actually, he isn’t preparing. Says he doesn’t need to. In fact, he said at the weekend he would know “within the first minute” of meeting his North Korean counterpart whether their meeting would be a success.
“I think that very quickly I’ll know whether or not something good is going to happen,” he told reporters in La Malbaie, Quebec, before leaving the G7 meeting for Singapore. “Just my touch, my feel. That’s what I do.
“I also think I’ll know whether or not it will happen fast,” Mr Trump added.
Last week, Mr Trump said he’d walk out if he thought the meeting wasn’t going well. “If I don’t think it’s a meeting that’s going to be fruitful, we won’t go. If the meeting when I’m there is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting,” he told reporters.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Trump spent his flight from Canada to Singapore “meeting with his staff, reading materials and preparing for his meetings in Singapore.”
So what would possibly go wrong?
What, apart from potential assassination attempts, lack of preparation, and two leaders as quick to take offence as these two? Even before they start talking, there are all kinds of diplomatic traps - particularly in the form of details that could be interpreted as an insult by the status conscious North Koreans. Who walks into the meeting venue first, for instance, and which side of the table the leaders are seated may be taken badly by Pyongyang.
A Japanese official who has attended meetings between Japanese and North Korean officials told The New York Times that typically, the person with the higher status enters the venue last and sits furthest from the door. Most people would expect this person to be the leader of the free world but Mr Kim, as we all now know, isn’t most people.
One solution to possible offence is to have a room with two entrances so the leaders could enter simultaneously.
Will summit failure mean Trump humiliation?
Almost certainly not. He’s already hedged his bets by suggesting that this may be the start of a series of talks and regardless he’s had three months of good publicity over the prospect of the summit. Suggestions that he could be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize have been embraced by even such fervent critics as British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson. So regardless of what happens today, Mr Trump is on the upside. As Holman Jenkins writes in The Australian, if Mr Kim wants anything, he will have to come up with an offer, knowing that dismissing it with a flourish is as useful to Mr Trump as embracing it with a flourish.
So ... bring it on.
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