What US liaison office in North Korea could mean

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday both said they support the opening of a U.S. liaison office in Pyongyang.

If the office opened, it would be the first of its kind between the wartime foes and could be a preliminary step toward normalizing their relations once the U.S. feels North Korea no longer poses any significant threat.

Here's a look at what opening a liaison office could mean for ties between the two countries:

Asked by an American reporter at their second summit in Hanoi if he was willing to allow the U.S. to open an office in Pyongyang, Kim said through a translator, "I think that is something which is welcomable."

Trump said that he considers it "a good idea" and that it should happen "both ways," suggesting he wants North Korea to open its own liaison office in Washington. No further details were available.

Many outside experts had said the opening of a liaison office was among possible things Trump could offer to persuade Kim to promise firmer denuclearization measures in Hanoi.

The North has complained about the lack of action taken by the U.S. since their first summit in June, when Kim and Trump agreed to establish new relations and build a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. has been pushing for North Korea to take substantial disarmament steps before getting any serious concessions.

The two countries have no embassies in each other's capitals because they have no diplomatic ties. They are actually in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Sweden, which has an embassy in Pyongyang, has offered consular services for U.S. citizens, including those who had been detained in the North on charges of illegally entering the country or engaging in espionage acts.

The North Korean mission at the United Nations in New York has also provided a back-channel negotiation option for the two countries.

It's not the first time the countries have floated the idea of a liaison office as way to improve ties.

In 1994, when the U.S. and North Korea signed a now-defunct landmark disarmament-for-aid deal, they vowed to open liaison offices and reduce barriers to investment and ultimately have ambassador-level relations. But the idea was shelved after a nuclear crisis erupted again in 2002, with U.S. officials accusing North Korea of running a covert uranium-enrichment program in violation of the 1994 deal.

The U.S. could look to South Korea as an example. North Korea and South Korea opened an inter-Korean liaison office last September at the North's border town of Kaesong as part of a flurry of reconciliation steps.

It is the first such Korean office since the peninsula was split into a U.S.-backed, capitalistic South and a Soviet-supported, socialist North in 1945. The Koreas had previously used telephone and fax-like communication channels that were often shut down in times of high tension.

South Korean officials work at the office and regularly hold meetings with North Korean officials. They sleep at nearby lodgings and take turns staffing the office on weekends.

The town is where the Korea's now-stalled jointly run factory complex was located. It combined South Korean initiatives, capital and technology with North Korea's cheap labor. Both Koreas want the U.S. to allow sanctions exemptions to allow the reopening of the factory park, which provided the North with much-needed foreign currency.</s>Donald Trump took Kim Jong Un's word that he knew nothing of the torture of an American college student while in North Korean custody, an about-face that sparked a bipartisan backlash back home on Thursday.

[WASHINGTON] Donald Trump took Kim Jong Un's word that he knew nothing of the torture of an American college student while in North Korean custody, an about-face that sparked a bipartisan backlash back home on Thursday.

The US president appeared to side with the reclusive leader about the 2017 case of Otto Warmbier, drawing outrage from incredulous Democrats who accused Trump of repeatedly aligning with tyrants.

The 22-year-old Ohio native was returned to the United States in a coma and died shortly afterwards. A US judge concluded Warmbier was tortured by North Korean authorities.

At the conclusion of his Hanoi summit with Kim, Mr Trump told reporters he talked with Kim about the "horrible" Warmbier case.

"He knew the case very well, but he knew it later," Mr Trump said, adding that "some really bad things" happened to Warmbier while he was detained.

Kim "tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word."

Mr Trump took credit for the release of Warmbier and other US hostages in 2017, saying at the time that "Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea."

At his January 2018 State of the Union address, the president praised Warmbier and spoke directly from the podium to the young man's parents seated in the audience.

"You are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength truly inspires us all," Mr Trump said, as lawmakers gave them a standing ovation.

But as Mr Trump presses for Korean denuclearisation, betting heavily on his relationship with Kim, the hard line he signaled that night in Congress has largely evaporated, prompting angry reactions across the political spectrum.

"I do not see the leader of North Korea as somebody who's a friend. We know what happened to Otto, we know what this country has done," said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the most senior Republican to break with Mr Trump on the issue.

"I support the president's effort to denuclearise them, but I do not have a misbelief of who this leader is."

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, snapped about Warmbier's brutal treatment.

"Of course Kim knew about it," he tweeted. "Apparently, the President of the United States is the only one who believes this obvious lie."

An angry House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff branded Mr Trump's acceptance of Kim's denial "detestable," while Senator Chris Van Hollen said the United States "cannot give Kim Jong Un a free pass for torturing and murdering one of our own."

Senator Rob Portman, from Warmbier's home city of Cincinnati, delivered a five-minute floor speech highlighting his "unforgiveable" treatment and the "brutal" nature of the regime, though he made no mention of the president's reversal.

And Mr Trump's former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, a Republican Party luminary, said that "Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime." But she too stopped short of criticising Mr Trump.

Several Democrats took the president's position as just his latest embrace of autocratic leaders.

They pointed to his acceptance of President Vladimir Putin's 2018 insistence that Russia did not meddle in the US election, and Mr Trump refusing to accept CIA conclusions that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she thought there was "something wrong" with Mr Trump choosing to believe "thugs" like Putin and Kim over the US intelligence community.

"Why does he keep sticking up for dictators over his own people??" Senator Tim Kaine asked.</s>HANOI (THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK, AFP) - While every movement of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is being watched by the world, his sister's close assistance has caught the public's attention.

As one of the most powerful figures in North Korea, Ms Kim Yo Jong stands next to her brother in all engagements and has been spotted inspecting the venue of the second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi and holding an ashtray for her brother.

When the North Korean leader departed Pyongyang for Hanoi last Saturday (Feb 23) afternoon for the Wednesday and Thursday (Feb 27 and 28) summit with United States President Donald Trump, Ms Kim stood next to her brother.

She was also spotted carefully assisting Mr Kim as he took a smoking break before arriving in Vietnam. A habitual smoker, Mr Kim was spotted smoking at Nanning Station in China in footage taken by Japanese TBS TV. There, Ms Kim stood next to him and held the ashtray.

At Dong Dang Station in Vietnam and at the North Korean Embassy in Hanoi on Tuesday, Ms Kim showed up first before her brother and checked the environs.

On Tuesday evening, Ms Kim also inspected the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel, where Mr Trump and Mr Kim were expected to hold the summit.

When the two leaders strolled through the hotel garden between talks sessions on Thursday, echoing a break they took at their first summit in Singapore, in the background was Ms Kim, who has displayed a repeated ability to appear in summit images of her brother in both Singapore and at inter-Korean meetings in Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarised Zone that divides the peninsula.

She peered around a pillar, before lurking behind a large potted plant as the men stopped to chat, joined by a smiling US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr Kim's right-hand man Kim Yong Chol.

On her close assistance and "odd jobs", experts say it stresses her position as an important figure for the North Korean regime. She is director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Former South Korean unification minister Jeong Se-hyun also said her holding the ashtray was "normal".

"It is more natural for Kim's sister to hold the ashtray than for others to do it. If it was another person, it could be interpreted as trying to flatter the leader," Mr Jeong said in a radio interview on Wednesday.

Pundits say it is very important for the North to limit access to anything that could possibly reveal information about Mr Kim's health, and that collecting the cigarette butts is an important task.

According to sources, North Korea is making sure to collect everything that Mr Kim has used, such as tissues and towels. Mr Kim is also said to bring along his own toilet when he travels.</s>U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un failed to reach an agreement on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula at their summit in Vietnam on Thursday, the White House said.

Trump said his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam failed to reach agreement due to North Korean demands to lift punishing U.S.-led sanctions.

“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that….we had to walk away from it,” Trump told reporters after summit talks were cut short in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.

Earlier, both Trump and Kim had expressed hope for progress on improving relations and on the key issue of denuclearisation, in their talks in Hanoi.

“The two leaders discussed various ways to advance denuclearization and economic driven concepts,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. “No agreement was reached at this time, but their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future.”

Trump had been scheduled to hold a “joint agreement signing ceremony” with Kim at the conclusion of their summit talks, according to an earlier White House announcement.

Both leaders left the venue of their talks, the French-colonial-era Metropole hotel, at 1.25 p.m. (0625), without attending a planned lunch together, and returned to their hotels.

Trump is now due to hold a news conference at 2 p.m. (7:00 GMT). News of the change in schedule sent South Korea’s currency lower and knocked regional stock markets.

Earlier Kim and Trump, seated across from each other at a conference table, appeared confident of progress.

“If I’m not willing to do that, I won’t be here right now,” Kim told reporters through an interpreter, when asked if he was ready to give up his nuclear weapons.

Trump, responding to that, said: “That might be the best answer you’ve ever heard.”

Kim did not elaborate on what “denuclearisation” would entail, but asked if he was ready to take concrete steps, Kim said they had just been talking about that.

While the United States is demanding North Korea give up all of its nuclear and missile programmes, the North wants to see the removal of a U.S. nuclear umbrella for its Asian allies such as South Korea and Japan.

The two leaders’ summit in Singapore in June, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, produced a vague statement in which Kim pledged to work toward denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

But there has been little progress since.</s>Trump tamps down expectations as he heads to Kim summit

WASHINGTON (AP) — Redefining success, President Donald Trump headed to his second meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un on Monday, determined to tamp down expectations that he'll achieve big strides toward denuclearization. Yet he was still eager to claim an attention-grabbing victory to offset the political turmoil he faces at home.

Trump is set to land in Vietnam late Tuesday and will have meetings with the host country's president and prime minister Wednesday before sitting down later with Kim for a private dinner.

Trump will be joined at the dinner by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, the White House said Monday. Kim also will have two aides with him, and there will be translators for both sides. Trump and Kim, who arrived in Vietnam Tuesday, will have a series of official meetings Thursday.

Trump laid out ultimate goals for both the U.S. and Kim in an appearance before the nation's governors Monday before boarding Air Force One to fly to Vietnam: "We want denuclearization, and I think he'll have a country that will set a lot of records for speed in terms of an economy."

Worries abound across world capitals about what Trump might be willing to give up in the name of a win, but there seems less mystery about his North Korean counterpart. Survival of the Kim regime is always the primary concern.

Trump was the driving force behind this week's summit, aiming to re-create the global spectacle of his first meeting with Kim last year. But that initial summit in Singapore yielded few concrete results, and the months that followed have produced little optimism about what will be achieved in the sequel.

He once warned that North Korea's arsenal posed such a threat to humanity that he might have no choice but to rain "fire and fury" on the nation. However, in the leadup to the new summit, he's proclaimed himself in no hurry for Pyongyang to prove it is abandoning its weapons.

"I'm not in a rush. I don't want to rush anybody, I just don't want testing. As long as there's no testing, we're happy," Trump told the governors on Sunday.

In fact, he is ready to write himself into the history books before he and Kim even shake hands in Hanoi.

"If I were not elected president, you would have been in a war with North Korea," Trump said last week. "We now have a situation where the relationships are good — where there has been no nuclear testing, no missiles, no rockets."

While Trump was airborne, Kim's armored train was on the move in China, bound toward Vietnam's capital. Vietnamese officials promised security at "the maximum level." Reporters from 40 nations were expected to transmit the story to the world.

Kim inherited a nascent nuclear program from his father, and after years of accelerated effort and fighting through crippling sanctions, he built an arsenal that demonstrated the potential to rocket a thermonuclear weapon to the mainland United States. That is the fundamental reason Washington now sits at the negotiating table.

Kim, his world standing elevated after receiving an audience with a U.S. president, has yet to show a convincing sign that he is willing to deal away an arsenal that might provide a stronger guarantee of survival than whatever security assurance the United States could provide. The North Koreans have largely eschewed staff-level talks, pushing for discussions between Trump and Kim.

Though details of the summit remain closely held, the two leaders are expected to meet at some point one-on-one, joined only by translators.

The easing of tension between the two nations, Trump and his allies contend, stems from the U.S. president's own unorthodox and unpredictable style of diplomacy. Often prizing personal rapport over long-held strategic interests, Trump has pointed to his budding relationship with the young and reclusive leader, frequently showing visitors to the Oval Office his flattering letters from Kim.

Trump, who has long declared that North Korea represented the gravest foreign threat of his presidency, told reporters recently that his efforts to defang Pyongyang had moved Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, something Abe would not confirm or deny.

Four main goals emerged from the first Trump-Kim summit: establishing new relations between the nations, building a new peace on the entire Korean Peninsula, completing denuclearization of the peninsula and recovering U.S. POW/MIA remains from the Korean War.

While some remains have been returned to the United States, little has been achieved on the other points. Korean and American negotiators have not settled on either the parameters of denuclearization or a timetable for the removal of both Korean weapons and American sanctions.

"The key lessons of Singapore are that President Trump sees tremendous value in the imagery of diplomacy and wants to be seen as a bold leader, even if the substance of the diplomacy is far behind the pageantry," said Abraham Denmark, director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

U.S. intelligence officials testified before Congress last month that it remains unlikely Kim will fully dismantle his arsenal. And many voices in the Trump administration, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, have expressed skepticism that North Korea would ever live up to a deal.

Mark Chinoy, senior fellow at U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California, said that after generations of hostility, the convivial atmosphere of Singapore "can't be discounted." But Chinoy noted that Trump had agreed to North Korean's "formulation of 'denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,' which Pyongyang has long made clear meant an end to the US security alliance with South Korea and an end to the U.S. nuclear umbrella intended to defend South Korea and Japan."

After the last summit, Trump unilaterally suspended some military drills with South Korea, alarming some in Seoul and at the Pentagon. But he was insistent this week that he would not draw down U.S. troops from South Korea. And American officials, even as they hint at a relaxed timetable for Pyongyang to account for its full arsenal, have continued to publicly insist they would not favor easing sanctions on North Korea until denuclearization is complete.

A year ago, North Korea suspended its nuclear and long-range missile tests and said it dismantled its nuclear testing ground, but those measures were not perceived as meaningful reductions. Experts believe Kim, who is enjoying warmer relations with South Korea and the easing of pressure from Russia and China, will seek a U.S. commitment for improved bilateral relations and partial sanctions relief while trying to minimize any concessions on his nuclear facilities and weapons.

"Kim is doing pretty well as it is," said Scott Seaman of the Eurasia Group. "The threat of a U.S. military strike is essentially zero, Kim's diplomatic charm offensive has made him into a bigger player on the world stage, and he continues to whittle away at international commitment to sanctions."

The Hanoi summit comes at a politically uncertain time for Trump.

His potential 2020 foes have begun unleashing attacks. The newly elected Democratic House has begun its investigations of the president, calling his former legal fixer, Michael Cohen, to appear before Congress while Trump is in Vietnam. And special counsel Robert Mueller, who has investigated possible ties between Trump's campaign Russian election interference, may finalize his report within days of the president's return to the United States.

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Deb Riechmann, Catherine Lucey, Zeke Miller and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow all of AP's summit coverage at https://apnews.com/Trump-KimSummit</s>US President Donald Trump has made headlines this week for his meeting with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un. The two met for a summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Wednesday. In the President's own words, the meeting was intended to discuss the denuclearisation of North Korea and release sanctions placed on the country as a result. In a tweet, he wrote: "Kim Jong Un and I will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse. I believe that China, Russia, Japan & South Korea will be very helpful!" News of the historic meeting has had us casting our minds back to 2011 when HELLO! was welcomed into Donald and First Lady Melania Trump's resplendent home in Mar-a-Lago. While these days much of Trump's working life is spent at the White House, he and his family still escape to their incredible 22-acre, 126 room ocean front estate in Palm Beach on a regular basis.

Watch the video below for a closer look at his incredible holiday home

Speaking about the house during our exclusive interview, Melania explained: "I really love New York, but Palm Beach is my second home. It's a really special time whenever we are here. It's where we got married, which was such a big event, so it is a very special place for us."

The couple keep their Palm Beach home as a vacation spot

The incredible property was built by philanthropist and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1927 and with has rare marble, carved stone, gold leaf and eclectic antiques. Donald purchased the home in 1985 and transformed it into an exclusive members-only club. Speaking about how often they visited their holiday home, Melania explained: "We always try to go from November until April. My husband goes almost every weekend. I skipped a few weekends because Barron was busy in school, so it was very tough. And he had some birthday parties and sports games to go to. I didn't want him to miss out on that, so I stayed in New York."

READ: Donald Trump had this to say about going to Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding

Melania opened up about spending time at the stunning mansion

The First Lady also spoke about their own private wing of the member-only home, saying: "We have our own special wing. It's very beautiful and it's very private. It's very comfortable because you have everything you need. It has tennis, a beach with a swimming pool, an amazing spa. You can really enjoy yourself and everything is right here. There is a beautiful patio and dining room and it's very elegant."

Melania opened up about the couple's son, Barron

Melania spoke about why she supported her husband's political ambitions ahead of him becoming President of the United States, saying: "I know this country needs somebody – a brilliant businessman who understands what needs to be done. And he is amazing, one of a kind. People don't really know what he does and how he succeeded. Some people like to talk negatively, but they don't really know what kind of empire he built. They would prefer to joke about his hair than about what he achieved."

READ: Donald Trump opens up about his conversation with the Queen

Ahead of his presidency, Melania also spoke about Donald running for the election

She also opened up about their then five-year-old son, Baron, explaining: "[Barron's] a very special boy, very mature for his age, and has an amazing imagination. His vocabulary, the way he talks, it's really something that I have never heard in a five-year-old." Donald added: "I want him to understand life and to understand how life works. I want him to make something of himself."</s>US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un smiled, shook hands and dined Wednesday in Hanoi, expressing optimism that their highly personal brand of diplomacy will lead to a deal on the totalitarian state’s nuclear weapons.

At the start of around two hours of talks and dinner at a luxury hotel in the Vietnamese capital, Trump predicted a “very successful” summit, now due to resume Thursday.

The two-day get-together is following up on the leaders’ initial historic meeting in Singapore in June, where Trump launched his charm offensive to try and get Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.

Shaking hands and smiling in front of a bank of a dozen alternating US and North Korean flags, they briefly took questions from reporters before starting one-on-one talks, then the dinner.

Critics said the Singapore summit was light on concrete results but Trump said the Hanoi talks would be “equal or better than the first” time. Kim said: “I am certain that a great outcome will be achieved this time that will be welcomed by all people.”

Earlier, Trump sent a tweet touting North Korea’s “AWESOME” potential if his “friend” Kim agrees to relinquish his weapons.

But the president risks being distracted by scandal back in Washington, where his former lawyer Michael Cohen was set to describe him as a “conman” in nationally televised, bombshell testimony to Congress starting shortly after Trump got back to his hotel on the other side of the world.

Asked by reporters if he had any reaction to Cohen’s testimony, Trump simply shook his head.

There was also tension over reporters’ access to the event, with White House staff taking the highly unusual step of barring correspondents from the usual pool that travels with the president.

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders blamed “the sensitive nature of the meetings” for the limitations.

Seeking a big foreign policy win to push back against domestic troubles, Trump believes he can make history with North Korea and claims Japan’s prime minister has already nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

His goal is to persuade Kim to dismantle his nuclear weapons and resolve a stand-off with the deeply isolated state that has bedevilled US leaders since the end of the Korean war in 1953.

To lure Kim into radical change, Trump is believed to be considering offering a formal peace declaration — though perhaps not a formal treaty — to draw a line under the technically still unfinished war.

At the same time, Washington faces mounting pressure to extract significant concessions from Kim, who has so far shown little desire to ditch his nuclear capability.

Washington and Pyongyang disagree even on what denuclearisation means precisely. And while North Korea has now gone more than a year without conducting missile and nuclear tests, it has done nothing to roll back the weapons already built.

A former real estate tycoon who often boasts he is one of the world’s best negotiators, Trump is pitching a vision of North Korea as a new Asian economic tiger if it surrenders its nuclear status.

Before Singapore, they were slinging bizarre insults — Trump calling Kim “rocket man” and Kim calling him a “dotard.”

With North Korea then busily testing missiles and conducting underground nuclear tests, analysts feared the duo were egging each other on towards a catastrophic confrontation.

Now, Trump talks of “love” and claims that his ground-breaking policies defused the threat posed by Kim.

Critics warn Trump is so keen to score a deal that he could give away too much, too quickly, endangering US allies South Korea and Japan.

In Singapore, Trump took his own generals by surprise when he announced a suspension of military exercises with the South — something the North badly wanted.

Washington would ideally like Kim to dismantle a key nuclear facility at Yongbyon, allow in international inspectors, or even hand over a list of all his nuclear assets — something the North Koreans have categorically refused to do.

In return, Trump is believed to be considering dangling relief from tough international sanctions. Opening diplomatic liaison offices is another possible US concession.

Another possibility is a joint declaration to end the Korean War — a hugely symbolic gesture which some analysts fear would upset the delicate power balance in a region where the US and China are already struggling for influence.</s>The nuclear summit between United States President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi ended abruptly on Thursday as they cut short their discussions and failed to reach an agreement.

The second meeting between the two leaders was supposed to build on their historic first summit in Singapore but they failed to bridge their differences and did not sign a joint statement as initially scheduled.

“Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times,” Trump told reporters.

Trump said that the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its nuclear programme had been the sticking point. “Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that,” he said.

But he insisted he was “optimistic that the progress we made” before and at the summit left them “in position to have a really good outcome” in the future.

“I'd much rather do it right than do it fast,” he added.

The outcome fell far short of the pre-meeting expectations and hopes, after critics said their initial historic meeting in Singapore was more style over substance. “This is a major failure,” tweeted Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund peace foundation.

It showed the limit of summitry, he added, with “not enough time or staff” to work out a deal.

In the original White House programme, a “Joint Agreement Signing Ceremony” had been scheduled in Hanoi as well as a working lunch for the two leaders.

In the event, both men left the summit venue without signing anything and Trump moved up his news conference by two hours.

Ankit Panda, from the Federation of American Scientists, warned on Twitter that the White House's expectation of further talks “does not have to be a perception shared in North Korea. Kim may have left irate, for all we know. He may have no intention of continuing this.”

Trump flew around the world for the meeting and Kim undertook a mammoth two-and-a-half-day trek through China in his olive green train, travelling 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles).

At first the smiles and bonhomie from Singapore ran on into their second date in Hanoi as Trump touted the “special relationship” between the two, although concrete statements were vague.

The US president frequently dangled the prospect of a brighter economic future for a nuclear-free North Korea, at one point saying there was “awesome” potential.

From the outset, he had appeared to downplay expectations of an immediate breakthrough in nuclear talks, saying he was in “no rush” to clinch a rapid deal and was content if a pause in missile testing continued.

But Harry Kazianis, Director of Korean Studies at the Centre for the National Interest, said that no agreement was better than a bad one.

There would be “nothing worse than signing a deal just to get something”, he told AFP. “The challenge is North Korea's nuclear weapons are already a reality,” he added. “Getting a deal that does little to nothing to remove that threat would be far worse than a flawed deal.”

In Singapore the two signed a vague document in which Kim pledged to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.

Progress subsequently stalled with the two sides disagreeing on what that means, as the North sought relief from sanctions and Washington pressed for concrete steps towards it giving up its weapons.

As in Singapore, the two men put on a show of bonhomie in Vietnam, appearing to share jokes in front of reporters.

Looking relaxed but appearing to say little, they indulged in a poolside stroll on Thursday around the gardens of the luxury Metropole Hotel, a colonial-era building that has played host to stars ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Brad Pitt.

It echoed a garden walkabout in Singapore, where the two men bonded over Trump's hulking car — the “Beast” — with the US president allowing the younger man a glimpse inside.

It was a far cry from the height of missile-testing tensions in 2017 when Trump slammed Kim as “rocket man” and the younger man branded the American president a “mentally deranged US dotard”.

In apparently unprecedented scenes, Kim answered unscripted questions from foreign reporters, saying that he would welcome the establishment of a US liaison office in Pyongyang, which would be a step on the way to diplomatic normalisation.

Before the summit, there was talk that there could be a political declaration ending the 1950-53 Korean War which finished technically with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

There were also hopes Kim could pledge to destroy North Korea's decades-old Yongbyon nuclear complex, which has long been at the heart of Pyongyang's atomic development but remains shrouded in secrecy — and North Korea has promised to mothball it twice before.

A patent distraction from the summit was a scandal back home in Washington with Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen calling him a “racist” and a “conman” during a congressional hearing.

The president already showed he had the testimony at the back of his mind when he tweeted about it before his first meeting with Kim, saying Cohen — who has been sentenced to three years in jail — was “lying in order to reduce his prison time”.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is claiming his relationship with North Korea's Kim Jong Un (gihm jung oon) is "very good," despite the collapse of the two leaders' summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.

A day after returning to Washington, Trump said on Twitter on Friday that the two had "very substantive negotiations." He added, "We know what they want and they know what we must have."

Trump did not address the pushback from North Korea, which disputed his account of why the summit fell apart. Trump had told reporters the summit failed because Kim insisted that all the sanctions on Pyongyang (pyuhng-yahng) be lifted without the North committing to eliminate its nuclear arsenal.

North Korea disputed that, insisting it asked only for partial sanctions relief in exchange for closing its main nuclear complex.</s>After traveling halfway around the world for a face-to-face meeting with one of the world's most notorious despots — with hopes of persuading the dictator to give up his nuclear weapons cache — the president who considers himself the world's ultimate deal-maker pushed away from the negotiating table with nothing more in hand than he had arrived with.

"Sometimes you have to walk," Trump said at an unusually tame post-summit press conference. "I think that was one of these times."

It would be easy to simply stack the summit atop a gathering pile of political, policy and personal humiliations for Trump in recent months.

That treacherous hill includes a historic loss of House seats by his party in November's mid-term elections; a 35-day government shutdown that he said he was "proud" to own; Congress' rejection of his proposal to fund a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico; the indictments and convictions of several of his closest associates by special counsel Robert Mueller; and even the allegations leveled Wednesday by his former fixer, Michael Cohen, that he ran his business and presidential campaign as a "cheat" and a "con man."

Without a doubt, Trump put himself in hole by agreeing to come meet Kim in the North Korean's backyard for a second nuclear summit without so much as a promise that Pyongyang would begin winding down its weapons program.

But what Trump sacrificed in prestige, time and energy pales in comparison to what he — and the U.S. — might have lost had he made the concessions to Kim necessary to strike a deal.

Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an NBC News contributor, called the summit "an outright failure" Thursday. But, he said, "Trump made the right decision to push for more than minimal steps and take no deal over a bad deal."

Trump revealed just how bad a deal it could have been in outlining the sticking points of a discussion centered around the removal of economic sanctions on Pyongyang in exchange for North Korean disarmament.

"Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that," Trump said. "They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn't give up all of the sanctions for that, so we continue to work and we'll see. But we had to walk away from that particular suggestion. We had to walk away from that."

Before the talks broke down, NBC News reported Wednesday night that U.S. officials had abandoned their demand that Kim make a full accounting of his nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs.

Like the trip itself, that suggested a strong desire on Trump's part to reach some sort of agreement with Kim before leaving Vietnam. Trump's schedule for Thursday even included a planned signing ceremony for an agreement that never materialized — a ceremony that was abruptly canceled because the two sides couldn't reach a deal.

Even before he landed in Hanoi earlier this week, Trump's appetite for an accord appeared strong enough to North Korea experts that many worried he would be suckered into a bad deal with Kim. Some of his critics saw a president desperate to score points on the international stage because of his domestic political troubles.

Trump didn't go so far as to say that he put himself in a position in which he had no good options — but he came close.

"At this time, we had some options," he said. "And at this time, we decided not to do any of the options."

No option may have been the best option.

And for a president who seems fond of driving himself into box canyons and refusing to shift into reverse, that's a different tack.

It has not always been the case that Trump has picked the least disastrous path. For five weeks earlier this year, he kept the government partially shutdown in an ill-fated attempt to force Democrats to fund a border wall. At the end of the process, he got less money for fencing from Congress than lawmakers were willing to give him before the shutdown.

Now, though, his decision to stay away from the dramatic deal-making moment is likely to please a wide range of North Korea experts in the U.S. More important, after bowing to Kim by agreeing to come to Hanoi without a deal ready to go in the first place, he didn't give away anything else.

That was a small victory wrapped in a larger defeat. But it wasn't the worst possible outcome for Trump.
The summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi abruptly ends earlier than scheduled, with the White House saying no deal has been reached in regards to relations between the two countries and North Korea's nuclear weapons policies and sanctions due to them.