President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to meet with North Korea's overlord, Kim Jong Un. In fact, Trump claims, it could happen within the next few months. But the North Korean dictator doesn't seem to agree.
Rather than acquiesce to Trump's leader-to-leader overtures, Pyongyang appears adamant it won't engage with either the U.S. or South Korea, which has for many months tried to open up communication with its bellicose northern neighbor. Even Trump's personal diplomacy doesn't seem to be making Kim any more willing to entertain a meeting. Trump told reporters on Wednesday he had spoken with Kim, a claim swiftly brushed aside by Kim Yo Jong, the supreme leader's sister and a top North Korean official.
She said her brother had a "great relationship" with the U.S. president, but didn't confirm any contact between the two leaders, according to North Korean media readouts. The "U.S.’ hostile policy remains unchanged," she said. North Korea's messaging is unmoved by Trump's abrupt scaling back of planned military drills with South Korea on Sunday, just hours before the exercises kicked off.
North Korea had railed against these drills, calling the exercises a rehearsal for war. The annual joint exercises "send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile" to North Korea, Trump said, a remark widely seen as an olive branch to Pyongyang—although Trump also framed the pullback as punishment for what he cast as Seoul's refusal to become embroiled in the U.S.' war with Iran. The drills, dubbed Ulchi Freedom Shield, are now due to finish on Friday, just under a week earlier than scheduled.
"If the U.S. side attempts to promote the measures they have taken this time as some kind of 'goodwill gesture,' they will not get the answer they desire," said Kim Yo Jong. The South Korean government has tried to reduce tensions with North Korea since current leader Lee Jae-myung was sworn in last June, including stopping propaganda broadcasts blaring from loudspeakers across the border. Lee quickly vowed to end the "vicious cycle of unnecessary military tensions," but Pyongyang officially dropped the decades-old goal of reunification with Seoul in May, more than a year and a half after designating South Korea its "principal enemy." The nations on the Korean peninsula are still technically at war and have been since an armistice marked the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea are the most "practical" way to slam the brakes on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, a top South Korean official said on Friday, according to the country's Yonhap news agency. "Inter-Korean exchange is at a standstill," the official told reporters. "I think he misses me," Trump said of Kim in July 2024.
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