President Trump meets this week with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Vietnam. Trump says talking to Kim has moved them away from the brink of war. But has it moved Kim any closer to denuclearization?</s>WASHINGTON — 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 the next day before the president and Kim greet one another and sit down Wednesday 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 is traveling to the summit by train and car, 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.

RELATED: North Korea confirms leader Kim Jong Un on train to Vietnam for summit

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.</s>Children at a kindergarten in Hanoi, some in Korean traditional "Hanbok" dress, have been practicing singing and dancing, hoping to show off their talents to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un when he comes to town this week for his second summit with United States' President Trump.

Elsewhere in the Vietnam-Korea Friendship Kindergarten, students have been assembling picture montages on maps of Vietnam and the Koreas. In another classroom, children were coloring in Vietnamese and North Korean flags with which they hope to greet Mr. Kim.

"We really want for Mr. Kim Jong-un, the great leader of the Korean people, to visit our school," said Ngo Thi Minh Ha, the school's rector.

Apple-cheeked youngsters in traditional national garb meeting a paternal leader is a mainstay of old-style communist iconography, and North Korea is the closest thing left to an old-style communist state. It even has its own separate word for Hanbok-style clothing: "Joson-ot."

But the ties that once bound Vietnam to North Korea in their fight against the US have long since frayed. These days, South Korea is the Korea most Vietnamese look to, as evidenced by Vietnam's many billboards for the goods and services of companies such as Samsung, Lotte and Hyundai, and the massive amount of trade and investment coming from Seoul.

The kindergarten, however, swims against the tide of history. It was built in 1978, three years after the end of the Vietnam War, a gift from the North Korean government, which also supplied it with toys, musical instruments, tables, chairs, and cookware, according to Hoang Thi Thanh, the school's rector from 2002 to 2013.

The school initially had just four classrooms accommodating 120 children, but according to Thanh, "I was very happy and proud to be one of the first teachers of the school, because it was probably the most beautiful school in Hanoi at that time."

It's now a three-story complex with a large courtyard and a student body of 470 in a busy residential neighborhood with run-down, 1970s-era apartment buildings.

The students learn about North Korea, its leaders, landmarks and culture, lessons that are supplemented by a sister relationship with a kindergarten in Pyongyang with which visits are exchanged each year.

According to Thanh, there was a political hiccup in 2010, when the North Korean government proposed renaming the school after Kim Il-sung, North Korea's founding father. Vietnam, whose ruling communist party has always favored collective leadership over personalized rule, demurred. A compromise was reached in which two classrooms were named after Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il – the grandfather and father, respectively, of Kim Jong-un – while a kindergarten classroom in Pyongyang was named after Vietnamese revolutionary hero Ho Chi Minh.

Ha, the rector, hopes Kim and Trump can achieve an agreement, and echoes the common sentiment that maybe Vietnam has something to teach North Korea, saying she hopes "the Korean people will enjoy peace and like the Vietnamese people, the Korean nation will embark on a reform process for development and prosperity."

For local parents, however, education rather than politics is the main concern.

"I had checked out some kindergartens near my house, but I decided to send my son here, because this school has good facilities and good teachers," Trieu Phuong Nhung said as she took her 4-year-old son to school.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.</s>HANOI/ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump where they will try to reach an agreement on a North’s Korean pledge to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Trump is due to arrive in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, on Tuesday evening.

Trump will meet Kim for a brief one-on-one conversation on Wednesday evening, followed by a social dinner, at which they will each be accompanied by two guests and interpreters, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Air Force One.

She said that would be followed by more meetings between the two leaders on Thursday.

Their talks come eight months after their historic summit in Singapore, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

While there is no real expectation that the second meeting will bring a final deal on ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons that threaten the United States, there are some hopes it could lead to a declaration that the 1950-53 Korean War is at last formally over.

But the United States would expect significant movement by Kim toward denuclearization in return.

In Singapore, Kim pledged to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but the vague agreement struck there has produced few concrete results. U.S. Democratic senators and security officials have warned Trump against cutting a deal that would do little to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Kim, who traveled from the North Korean capital by train, arrived at the station in the Vietnamese town of Dong Dang after crossing over the border from China.

Vietnamese officials were on hand to receive him at the station with a red-carpet including a guard of honor and North Korean and Vietnamese flags flying.

Kim was seen leaving the train in Dong Dang and getting into a Mercedes Benz vehicle for the 170 km (105 miles) journey to the capital, Hanoi, by car.

He waved from the car before setting off to young people lining the street waving Vietnamese and North Korean flags.

About a dozen body guards ran along side his car as he set off.

Both Kim and Trump are also due to hold separate talks with Vietnamese leaders.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also arrived in Hanoi, on Tuesday, a reporter traveling with him said.

Pompeo has been Trump’s top envoy in his efforts to improve ties with the reclusive North and has made several trips to Pyongyang to negotiate steps toward ending its nuclear program.

Trump told reporters he and Kim would have “a very tremendous summit”.

Tweeting on Monday, he stressed the benefits to North Korea if it gave up its nuclear weapons. “With complete Denuclearization, North Korea will rapidly become an Economic Powerhouse. Without it, just more of the same. Chairman Kim will make a wise decision!” Trump said.

In a speech on Sunday night, Trump, however, appeared to play down any hope of a major breakthrough at the Hanoi summit, saying he would be happy as long as North Korea maintained its pause on weapons testing.

“I’m not in a rush. I don’t want to rush anybody,” he said. “I just don’t want testing. As long as there’s no testing, we’re happy.”

North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in September 2017 and last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017.

A South Korean presidential spokesman told reporters in Seoul on Monday that the two sides might be able to agree to a formal end of the Korean War, which ended in an armistice not a peace treaty, a move North Korea has long sought.

While a formal peace treaty may be a long way off, the two sides have discussed the possibility of a political declaration stating that the war over.</s>HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnamese carrier Bamboo Airways will sign a deal with Boeing Co to purchase 10 planes on the sidelines of this week’s Trump-Kim summit, an airline executive said on Sunday.

The carrier, which is owned by property and leisure company FLC Group and made its first flights in January, placed a provisional order last year for 20 Boeing 787 widebody jets worth $5.6 billion at list prices.

“We will sign with Boeing a deal to buy 10 more Boeing 787s. This is different from the deal signed earlier for 20 Boeing planes,” said the executive who declined to be named due to the confidentiality of the matter.

“That means we will have ordered 30 Boeing 787s. The deal will be signed during the summit,” the executive said.

It is unclear whether this is a firm or provisional order by Bamboo, which is currently operating 10 Airbus planes.

Boeing did not provide an immediate comment.

Bamboo is aiming to open routes to the United States after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration declared Vietnam complied with international aviation standards, in a move that would allow Vietnamese carriers to fly there for the first time and codeshare with U.S. airlines.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will hold their second summit in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Feb. 27-28.

Bamboo’s first 787 is set to arrive in the third quarter of 2020 and the airline is preparing to launch flights to the United States from late 2019 or early 2020 with leased jets unless Boeing can deliver them earlier, Bamboo’s chairman Trinh Van Quyet had earlier told Reuters.

“Direct flights between Vietnam and the U.S. will not only push tourism activities, but also further facilitate bilateral trade and investment,” he said. “We are receiving huge support from Boeing to deploy our flights to the U.S.”

Rivals Vietnam Airlines JSC and VietJet Aviation JSC also have ambitions to fly to the United States, although the latter carrier has yet to place an order for widebody jets.

VietJet is also expected to sign a major jet deal with Boeing on the sidelines of the Trump-Kim summit, according to sources familiar with the matter.

VietJet, while not government-owned, increasingly uses state visits to showcase major plane orders balanced between Boeing and Airbus SE. It signed a deal to buy 100 Boeing 737 MAX narrowbody jets when former U.S. President Barack Obama visited Hanoi in 2016.

The airline is likely to finalize next week a separate provisional deal agreed last year at the Farnborough Airshow to buy another 100 Boeing 737 MAX jets worth almost $13 billion at list prices, sources said on condition of anonymity.</s>President Donald Trump is now in Vietnam for his second formal summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. From the beginning of this process, one of the biggest concerns was that Trump would be too eager to cut a deal. His lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize, for example, suggests he is quite invested in a legacy-defining outcome.

To combat this perception, the administration has emphasized a hard line: No sanctions relief unless and until North Korea has totally and verifiably denuclearized.

Except with Trump now meeting with Kim again, that line has clearly been softened. And its softening suggests that eagerness to cut a deal may be lurking.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared on NBC News last week and played up what he labeled the toughest sanctions North Korea has ever faced. “And we won’t release that pressure until such time as we’re confident that we’ve substantially reduced that risk,” he said.

That caught the ear of many, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, who noted in an interview with Pompeo on Sunday that “substantially reduced that risk” wasn’t as firm as the complete and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.

But Pompeo insisted there had been no change. He said the sanctions implemented by the United Nations Security Council in 2017 would indeed remain in place until there was “full, verified denuclearization.” But he also suggested other types of sanctions could potentially be relaxed before then.

“Remember these sanctions cover a broad array of activities,” he said. “The core economic sanctions, the sanctions that prevent countries from conducting trade, creating wealth for North Korea, those sanctions are definitely going to remain in place. There are other things we could do – exchanges of people, lots of other ways that North Korea is sanctioned today – that if we get a substantial step and move forward we could certainly provide an outlet which would demonstrate our commitment to the process as well.”

This seems like a shift in emphasis at least. Pompeo hadn’t previously carved out these other types of sanctions when delivering his ultimatums; he simply said no sanctions relief without total denuclearization, full stop.

Maybe he thought it was just assumed that he was talking only about the U.N. sanctions? But a look back at Pompeo’s remarks suggests this is more than just a matter of emphasis. At multiple points over the past year, Pompeo has said outright or clearly suggested that no sanctions would be lifted short of total denuclearization. What’s more, he often did so while emphasizing that the Trump administration wouldn’t entertain the kind of incremental approach that it now seems to be considering.

“We’re not going to relieve sanctions until such time as we achieved our objectives,” he said in May 2018. “We are not going to do this in small increments, where the world is essentially coerced into relieving economic pressure.”

He added in June: “The president has been very clear: Sanctions will not be lifted until such time as the denuclearization itself has been completed. Look, we’ve been down the path before where promises have been made and not kept.”

Pompeo repeatedly mentioned sanctions remaining in place without indicating that he was referring to just U.N. or economic sanctions. And in fact, in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July, he made clear that both U.N. and U.S.-imposed sanctions were included in the ultimatum.

“Until North Korea eliminates its weapons of mass destruction, our sanctions and those at the United Stations will remain – United Nations – will remain in effect,” he said.

In November, CBS’ John Dickerson asked whether “any economic sanctions” would be lifted before total denuclearization. Pompeo again said they would not be:

DICKERSON: Mr. Secretary, you said that North Korea will not see any economic sanctions lifted until it has demonstrated complete denuclearization. Is that still your position?

SECRETARY POMPEO: It is. Not only complete denuclearization, but our capacity to verify that that has taken place.

But by last month, we started to see some cracks in the ultimatum. While interviewing Pompeo, Fox News’ Rich Edson noted that Kim in his New Year’s address floated limited sanctions relief for incremental steps including a pledge not to transfer arms. Pompeo didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

Edson then asked him whether the administration’s position remained that same, that North Korea had to give up its nuclear arms to get any sanctions relief. Pompeo demurred. Rather than saying this was the demand, he instead described it as “the objective”:

EDSON: And the position is still the same: They must give up their nuclear weapons in order to get sanctions relief from the United States?

SECRETARY POMPEO: I don’t think there has been a single variant from the core proposition, which is the fully denuclearized North Korea, as verified by international experts, is the objective of this administration. We intend to achieve that.
• Court rules that the Mueller appointment is valid
• Analysis: What did first Trump-Kim summit actually achieve?
• Trump warns GOP not to fall for ‘trap’ set by Democrats Fast-forward to today, and Pompeo is now making clear that certain types of sanctions (though not the core U.N. sanctions) could indeed be on the table. And that’s a shift – both tonally and practically – from where this whole thing began.

It doesn’t mean he and Trump will launch themselves headlong into a bad deal. But it does mean they aren’t being as firm as they once were.</s>That attempt ultimately failed, with each side blaming the other.

Trump is, however, the first U.S. president to talk face-to-face with a North Korean leader. His meeting with dictator Kim Jong-un later this week in Hanoi will be their second summit.

The official American position is that Kim must give up his nuclear weapons before anything else can happen. The official North Korean position is that each side must make concessions in order to meet the long-term goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea won't be at the summit. But its support is crucial if any deal is to be made.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has suggested an intermediate path whereby his country would re-establish economic ties with the North, ties that were broken after the UN — at America's behest — imposed sanctions against Pyongyang.

The other area where real progress can be made is the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. This has long been one of the North's aims. South Korea is agreeable. In the past, the U.S. has been reluctant to offer a peace treaty without getting anything in return. But with visions of a Nobel Peace Prize dancing before his eyes, Trump may be more amenable to the idea.

Can this week's two-day summit accomplish anything? If the U.S. insists that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons as a precondition for future action, then the answer is probably no.

Having become a nuclear state at great cost to itself, North Korea is unlikely to surrender the power and prestige that accompany this status.

It might be willing, however, to sign a treaty with the U.S. that limited the use of such weapons by both sides.

In short, there is room for unorthodox thinking here. Trump prides himself on being able to think outside the proverbial box. If he wants to get anywhere with North Korea, he will need to exercise that talent.

Thomas Walkom is a Toronto-based columnist covering politics. Follow him on Twitter: @tomwalkom

Thomas Walkom is a Toronto-based columnist covering politics. Follow him on Twitter: @tomwalkom</s>President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House on Friday, February 15, 2019. Picture: AP

President Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House on Friday, February 15, 2019. Picture: AP

DONALD Trump has flown off to meet Kim Jong-un in Vietnam, and nervous observers are expecting more drama from the second summit between the two erratic leaders.

Mr Trump is confident about his relationship with the North Korean leader, tweeting a tantalising offer of renewed influence for Kim, saying that giving up nuclear weapons could help the country "fast become one of the great economic powers."

The US President said he was certain "Chairman Kim" would "make a wise decision".

Mr Trump has been effusive about his counterpart, saying the pair exchanged "beautiful letters" and "fell in love" following their first summit in Singapore last June. The former reality star believes firmly in his ability to negotiate a successful deal and move towards denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, but critics are unconvinced Kim has taken any real steps towards this goal.

Mr Trump's words came as it emerged that North Korea's key nuclear reactor for producing weapons-grade plutonium may still be in operation. Satellite images of the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center suggested the reactor could still be running, according to planet.com.

The enormous security operation swinging into action for the summit in Hanoi has had just ten days to prepare, far less than the nearly two months they said Singapore had. The meeting is likely to provide more insight into the bizarre relationship, and gives Mr Trump a chance to make clear demands over the expectations on North Korea.

But the President has been attacked for his friendly overtures towards a leader notorious for human rights abuses against his own people, praising and flattering his intelligence and controversially saluting a North Korean general at their first summit. Washington will be watching nervously for any embarrassing moments of apparent capitulation from Mr Trump.

"Trump has really virtually no interest in the internal affairs - and human rights, in particular - of other regimes around the world," Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, told the Washington Post.

His circle claims his strategy of buttering up Kim is working wonders for the move towards denuclearisation and peace on the Korean Peninsula. They claim it is a slow process of resolving a decades-long conflict, and that Mr Trump is on the right track in developing and maintaining a cordial relationship.

"We have managed to sustain engagement now for many months, largely due to the personal determination of President Trump and his consistent willingness to use voice and written word to send positive messages of trust and confidence to Chairman Kim and the North Korean leadership," US special representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun told the Post.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told NBC's Today that denuclearisation was "a long and difficult task", although he told Fox News he was hoping for a "substantive step forward".

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders played down expectations, telling Fox "the President's not in a hurry."

Mr Trump predicted a "continuation of the progress" made in Singapore, with a vague mention of "Denuclearization?"

But Kim, currently heading through China to Vietnam's capital on an armoured train, may have no intention of capitulating, instead exploiting Mr Trump's overtures of friendship to improve North Korea's standing in the world, and reduce trade sanctions.

"There'll Be One Winner," wrote Nicholas Eberstadt in the New York Times. "One wants to make North Korea safe for the world, while the other wants to make the world safe for North Korea."

Kim will first meet with Vietnam's President Nguyen Phu Trong and is expected to discuss reforms that have seen it become of one of the fast-growing economies in the world and have been suggested as a road map for the impoverished hermit kingdom.

In Hanoi, T-shirts were being sold bearing Kim's face along with the phrase "Rocket Man", the insulting nickname Mr Trump gave Kim in 2017 before their love-in began, when North Korea's weapons tests and an exchange of threats between the leaders had many fearing war. Kindergarteners dressed in traditional Korean Hanbok were practising songs to welcome Kim. Tourists posed in front of the hundreds of US and North Korean flags around the city.

"Security will be at the maximum level," Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Hoai Trung told reporters at a briefing.

Head of the information ministry Nguyen Manh Hung said the 3000 journalists from 40 countries expected in Hanoi could rely on his agency as "you'd count on a family member."

The ultra-tight security will be appreciated by North Korean authorities, who are extremely vigilant about the safety of Kim, the third member of his family to rule the North with absolute power. His decision to take a train, not a plane, may have been influenced by better ability to control security. When Kim flew to Singapore, North Korea borrowed a Chinese plane.

Vietnam is eager to show off its huge economic and development improvements since the destruction of the Vietnam War, but the country also does not tolerate dissent and can exercise more control than more democratic potential hosts.

Two men impersonating Kim and Mr Trump have been posing for pictures with onlookers ahead of the summit.

Last week, Australian Kim lookalike Lee Howard Ho Wun wrote on Facebook that about 15 police or immigration officers demanded a mandatory "interview" and threatened him with deportation. He said officials later told him that his visa was invalid and he had to leave the country.

"I feel a little bit annoyed," the Hong Kong-based impersonator, who uses the name Howard X, said as he checked out of his hotel. "But what is to be expected of a one-party state with no sense of humour?"

Mr White will be allowed to stay in the city but has been asked to stop appearing in costume in public.

Vietnam has announced an unprecedented traffic ban along a possible arrival route for Kim, which will affect a 169-kilometre stretch of highway from the border with China to Hanoi. Ahead of Kim's arrival, hundreds of soldiers guarded the station by the border, where he may alight and finish his journey to Hanoi by car.

"Dong Dang station will receive leader Kim Jong-un's train, after it passes the Vietnam-China border, starting his official visit to Vietnam and attend USA-DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) summit," Vietnam's Government Office said in a statement.

The June summit disappointed many observers for not appearing to achieve enough, but South Korean President Moon Jae-in told reporters in Seoul these talks would be a critical opportunity to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Mr Moon, who met Kim three times last year and has lobbied hard to revive nuclear diplomacy between the US and North Korea, is eager for a breakthrough that would allow him to push ambitious plans for inter-Korean engagement, including lucrative joint economic projects that are held back by US-led sanctions against the North.

"If President Trump succeeds in dissolving the world's last remaining Cold War rivalry, it will become yet another great feat that will be indelibly recorded in world history," Mr Moon said.

North Korea has spent decades building its nuclear program at great political and economic sacrifice, and there is doubt among experts that it will easily give up its program.

South Korean media reported that Mr Trump and Kim might strike a deal that stops short of a hoped-for road map for full North Korean denuclearisation.

Mr Trump also spoke of "substantial progress" in trade talks with China on Sunday, saying he would delay planned tariff hikes on imports ahead of a summit with Xi Jinping in Florida. Chinese leaders committed to buying an additional 10 million metric tons of US soybeans on Friday.</s>
• Kim and the US President Donald Trump will meet for their second nuclear summit this week.
• During their first summit in June 2018, they laid out an agreement for denuclearization and “lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”
• Here are images of Kim’s arrival in Vietnam.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Dong Dang, Vietnam, at the border of China, on Tuesday.

As Business Insider’s Alexandra Ma reported, Kim took a three-and-a-half day ride on an armored train to get to Vietnam.

Kim Yo Jong has become “an important aide” to her brother. She serves as the vice department director of the Workers’ Party’s Central Committee.

Vietnam is a significant location for both North Korea and the United States.

North Korea provided both “material and personnel” to Vietnam during the Vietnam War against the United States, The New York Times reported, and there are gravestones in Vietnam (though their remains were repatriated) for North Korean pilots killed during the war.

For the US, Vietnam was the site of a long and ultimately failed war that ended with North Vietnam defeating the US backed south in 1975. Since 1995, the two countries have worked to normalize relations (and become healthy trade partners), which The Times noted could be a model for North Korea.

South Korea also normalized relations with Vietnam in 1992.

Kim and Trump are scheduled to meet for a second summit this week.

Trump has been tweeting ahead of the summit.

“Heading over to Vietnam for my meeting with Kim Jong Un,” the president said, on February 25, local time. “Looking forward to a very productive Summit!”

The US Secretary State Mike Pompeo arrived on Tuesday.

The two leaders’ first summit was in Singapore in June of 2018.

During their first meeting Trump and Kim laid out an agreement between the two countries:
• The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
• The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
• Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
• The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

The two leaders hope to expand on their initial agreement.

And the world is watching.

Spectators – not just in Hanoi where they lined up to watch Kim’s motorcade – are waiting to see if progress can be made between the two countries.</s>DONG DANG, Vietnam — The Latest on the summit in Vietnam between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump (all times local):

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is being accompanied in Vietnam by a group of top lieutenants including his influential younger sister.

Kim arrived by train at the Dong Dang railway station on the China-Vietnam border on Tuesday and is on his way to Hanoi for a summit with President Donald Trump.

Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo Jong was seen before the leader stepped out of their special train and took a black limousine waiting for him at the train station.

Before Kim Jong Un’s arrival, North Korean officials who had arrived in Vietnam in advance, including his top representative for U.S. affairs, Kim Hyok Chol, had gathered at the train station.

Also accompanying Kim Jong Un is Kim Yong Chol, a former military intelligence chief who has been deeply involved in nuclear diplomacy since North Korea entered talks early last year.

After barrelling through China for three days on his green-and-yellow armoured train, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has switched to another mode of high-security transport after arriving in Vietnam.

He’s now travelling in a massive bulletproof Mercedes encircled by bodyguards.

After arriving at Vietnam’s Dong Dang Station, Kim shook hands with Vietnamese officials and waved to the crowd before stepping into the limousine. A dozen of crew-cut bodyguards flanked the vehicle and ran in formation as it slowly rolled out of the station and headed to Hanoi, where Kim will meet President Donald Trump for their second summit.

Kim’s bodyguards also ran alongside his limousine during his summit with Trump last June in Singapore and his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last April.

Kim Jong Un’s train has arrived in Vietnam for the North Korean leader’s second summit with Donald Trump.

Vietnamese troops in crisp white uniforms and black boots stood at attention Tuesday to welcome Kim on a red carpet beneath large North Korean and Vietnamese flags at the Dong Dang railway station on the China-Vietnam border. A crowd gathered along the road near the station to wave North Korean flags and bouquets of flowers on a cold, drizzling morning.

It wasn’t clear if Kim had visited any places in China on his trip from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to the border. Press reports speculate that he will drive the 170 kilometres to Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, ahead of his Wednesday meeting with Trump..
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrives in Vietnam, ahead of his two-day summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in the capital Hanoi.