HANOI (Reuters) - Cars stopped and tourists gawked on Friday at what appeared to be North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wandering the streets of Hanoi.

Days before the second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump, to be held in Vietnam’s capital, a Kim impersonator appeared at the Metropole Hotel, a back-up location for the meeting.

Howard X, an Australian, has been cashing in on his resemblance to North Korea’s leader, especially his haircut.

“Kim, please get a proper haircut. It looks awful,” Howard X said, adding it takes him three hours to prepare his outfit and get into character.

The impersonator visited Singapore in June before the first summit, where he performed satirical stunts and said he was briefly detained by authorities.

He also showed up at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, where he danced in front of an appalled North Korean cheer squad before security hauled him away..

“Last time we did it in Singapore, which is kind of his territory,” he said, exchanging handshakes and hugs with another impersonator dressed as Trump. “Now we are in my territory with my comrades.”

But that did not last long.

The Kim lookalike said Vietnamese authorities had questioned them and warned them of possible deportation after they had taped an interview at a local TV station, which did not air it.

“They then said that this was a very sensitive time in the city due to the Trump/Kim summit and that our impersonation was causing a ‘disturbance’,” Howard X said in a Facebook post.

He added he had reluctantly signed an agreement that he would not give interviews or do any impersonations in public.

Earlier, the impersonators were surrounded by reporters and television cameras at the hotel, before security staff showed them the door.

Hanoi is rolling out the red carpet for the real leaders and their delegations. The flags of Vietnam, the United States and North Korea lined main roads, alongside a summit emblem depicting two hands clasped inside a blue circle.

Howard X said he planned to eat Vietnamese food and play golf with his partner and Trump impersonator, Russell White, during the Feb. 27-28 summit.

Later, outside Hanoi’s Opera House, a crowd gathered, laughing and taking pictures.

Howard X was dressed in a Mao suit with a badge featuring the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who was Kim Jong Un’s father.

“I thought it was the real Kim Jong Un when I looked at his back, but oh well, it is not,” said Lee Sang-hyuk, a South Korean student doing volunteer work in Vietnam.</s>HANOI: Shorn on the sides, thick on top for the Kim Jong Un look; bright and blonde for the Donald Trump-loving customers: a creative Hanoi barber is offering free cuts ahead of the leaders' meeting in the Vietnamese capital next week.Barber Le Tuan Duong has been overrun with customers since word got out about his free dos, a gesture he's offering out of sheer excitement for the February 27-28 meeting in Hanoi.But one style has come out on top."Over the past three days, I have made 200 Kim style haircuts, but only five for Trump," he told AFP in his cramped Tuan Duong beauty academy in Hanoi.He would normally charge a whopping USD 43 for the Trump dye-job, a steep fee in a city where most haircuts cost a few dollars.No matter that Trump's infamous coif has come under fire, some Hanoians are delighted with the do."I want the Vietnamese to know more about Trump, through my hairstyle. For me, Trump is an excellent man and that's why I want this hairstyle," a freshly dyed Vuong Bao Nam said.The barber is not the only artist in Hanoi paying tribute to the leaders.Painter Tran Lam Binh has been busy churning out technicolour peace portraits of the men, including one emblazoned with red hearts and the word "L-O-V-E".His colour palette may not be true to life, but Trump's blonde locks and Kim's full cheeks in the 10 or so paintings he has created so far are unmistakable."I really want the two leaders, or just one of them, to come and see my works here... I dream of giving one of the portraits to them," Binh told AFP from a Hanoi cafe where he has been working on the series.The self-proclaimed Trump obsessive started painting the American president after the election, and has about 50 portraits of him in his studio -- some that he displayed in the US capital outside the White House in 2016."When I paint him, I feel like I understand his inner feelings through his eyes, his face," the 36-year-old artist said, standing next to several easels displaying his technicolour works.He has even sculpted a nearly two-metre (six-foot) statue of the brash US leader, and while Binh's admiration for the reclusive Kim who has overseen North Korea's nuclear ambitions has been slower to emerge, he has grown fond of him. "I like his humour and his exhibitionist nature," he said.The meeting between Trump and Kim is aimed at building on their summit in Singapore in June, the first ever face-to-face between sitting leaders from the US and North Korea, which have never formally ended the 1950-53 Korean War.</s>SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A former North Korean diplomat says leader Kim Jong Un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons and sees his upcoming second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump as a chance to cement his country's status as a nuclear weapons state.

Thae Yong Ho, who defected to South Korea in 2016, said in a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday that next week's meeting in Vietnam will be a failure if Trump can't get Kim to declare he will abandon all of his nuclear facilities and weapons and return North Korea to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

Thae worked as a minster at the North Korean Embassy in London before fleeing to South Korea. He is the highest-level North Korean diplomat to defect to the South.</s>With their second summit fast approaching, speculation is growing that U.S. President Donald Trump may try to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to commit to denuclearization by giving him something he wants more than almost anything else: an announcement of peace and an end to the Korean War.

Such an announcement could make history. It would be right in line with Trump's opposition to "forever wars." And, coming more than six decades after the fighting essentially ended, it just seems like common sense.

But, if not done carefully, it could open up a whole new set of problems for Washington.

Here's why switching the focus of the ongoing talks between Pyongyang and Washington from denuclearization to peace would be a risky move — and why it might be exactly what Kim wants when the two leaders meet in Hanoi on Feb. 27-28.

The Korean Peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel after World War II, with the U.S. claiming a zone of influence in the south and the Soviet Union in the north. Within five years, the two Koreas were at war.

Though the shooting stopped in 1953, the conflict ended with an armistice, essentially a cease-fire signed by North Korea, China and the 17-nation, U.S.-led United Nations Command that was supposed to be replaced by a formal peace treaty. But both sides instead settled ever deeper into Cold War hostilities marked by occasional outbreaks of violence.

The conflict in Korea is technically America's longest war.

North Korea, which saw all of its major cities and most of its infrastructure destroyed by U.S. bombers during the war, blames what it sees as Washington's unrelenting hostility over the past 70 years as ample justification for its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. It claims they are purely for self-defense.

The U.S., on the other hand, maintains a heavy military presence in South Korea to counter what it says is the North's intention to invade and assimilate the South. It has also implemented a long-standing policy of ostracizing the North and backing economic sanctions.

Trump escalated the effort to squeeze the North with a "maximum pressure" strategy that remains in force.

A combination of that strategy and the North's repeated tests of missiles believed capable of delivering its nuclear weapons to the U.S. mainland are what brought the two countries to the negotiating table.

Getting a formal peace treaty has been high on the wish list of every North Korean leader, starting with Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

A peace treaty would bring international recognition, probably at least some easing of trade sanctions, and a likely reduction in the number of U.S. troops south of the Demilitarized Zone.

If done right, it would be a huge boost to Kim's reputation at home and abroad. And, of course, to the cause of peace on the Korean Peninsula at a time when Pyongyang says it is trying to shift scarce resources away from defense so that it can boost its standard of living and modernize its economy with a greater emphasis on science and technology.

Washington has a lot to gain, too.

Trump has said he would welcome a North Korea that is more focused on trade and economic growth. Stability on the peninsula is good for South Korea's economy and probably for Japan's as well.

Though Trump hasn't stressed human rights, eased tensions could create the space needed for the North to loosen its controls over political and individual freedoms.

But it's naive to expect North Korea to suddenly change its ways.

According to a recent estimate, it has over the past year continued to expand its nuclear stockpile. And even as it has stepped up its diplomatic overtures to the outside world, Pyongyang has doubled down internally on demanding loyalty to its totalitarian system.

After his first summit with Kim, in Singapore last June, Trump declared the nuclear threat was over.

He isn't saying that anymore.

Trump made no mention of the word "denuclearization" during his State of the Union address. Instead, he called his effort a "historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula" and stressed that Kim hasn't conducted any recent nuclear or missile tests and has released Americans who had been jailed in the North and returned the remains of dozens of Americans killed in the war.

Kim, meanwhile, has good reason to want to turn his summits with Trump into "peace talks."

The biggest win for the North would be to get a peace declaration while quietly abandoning denuclearization altogether, or by agreeing to production caps or other measures that would limit, but not eliminate, its nuclear arsenal. Simply having a summit without a clear commitment to denuclearization goes a long way toward establishing him as the leader of a de facto nuclear state.

Unless Washington is willing to accept him as such, that will only make future talks all the more difficult.

The U.S. has, however, continued to take a hard line in lower-level negotiations leading up to the summit.

Stephen Biegun, Trump's new point man on North Korea, stressed in a recent speech that as a prerequisite for peace, Washington wants a "complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean weapons of mass destruction missile programs," expert access and monitoring of key sites and, ultimately, "the removal and destruction of stockpiles of fissile material, weapons, missiles, launchers, and other weapons of mass destruction."

The question is whether Trump will similarly challenge Kim or choose an easier and splashier — but less substantive — declaration of peace.

If he chose to do so, Trump could unilaterally announce the end of the Korean War.

It would be great TV. But it wouldn't necessarily mean all that much.

Trump can't by himself conclude an actual peace treaty. China, and possibly a representative of the U.N. Command, would have to be involved. South Korea would naturally want to be at the table. The U.S. Senate would have to ratify whatever they came up with.

Back in 1993, the administration of President Bill Clinton reached a familiar-sounding agreement with Pyongyang "to achieve peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula."</s>Vietnam, the location of President Donald Trump's next meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has come a long way since America abandoned its war against communist North Vietnam in the 1970s.

North and South united into a youthful nation that now has 95 million people, and in the mid-1980s the country embraced global trade, starting its rise as a production base for South Korea's Samsung and many other manufacturing giants. The "Doi Moi" reforms adopted by its communist rulers, modeled largely on China's transformation into the world's factory floor, could be a model for North Korea.

GOING FOR GROWTH: The Vietnamese economy expanded at an estimated annual rate of just above 7 percent in 2018, fueled by a double-digit increase in manufacturing output. At 5.54 quadrillion Vietnamese dong ($238 billion in 2017), its GDP ranks in the world's top 50 economies. As the economy has grown, poverty rates have fallen and life expectancy has risen, to 76 years.

SAMSUNG FACTOR: Heavy investment by South Korea's Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of computer chips and cellphones, led commitments by other big global manufacturers like Microsoft and Intel. Samsung opened Vietnam's first mobile phone plant in 2009 and now employs more than 100,000 people in its factories there. In 2017, the company accounted for more than a quarter of Vietnam's total exports. Samsung had no comment on speculation that Kim might visit one of its factories outside the capital, Hanoi, where he is to meet with Trump.

EXPORT BONANZA: By joining the World Trade Organization and regional groupings including the Pacific Rim accord called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Vietnam has leapfrogged its neighbors in taking advantage of lowered tariffs, and its exports have soared. In the meantime, manufacturers from South Korea, Japan and China have crowded in to take advantage of lower costs and other incentives. Exports surged to $214 billion in 2017, up by more than a fifth from the year before. The U.S. is Vietnam's largest export market, at nearly $42 billion in 2017. It's not all cellphones: Vietnam's main exports also include electronics, shoes and apparel.

CHALLENGES: Having just barely reached middle-income status, Vietnam is struggling to raise productivity — the key to ensuring living standards will continue to improve. Economists say the country's productivity is only about a third of China's and much lower than in affluent countries. Heavy reliance on export-led growth leaves the country vulnerable to global downturns. Vietnamese leaders also have emulated China in keeping a tight grip on the media, political dissent and other freedoms. Rural poverty, pollution and corruption are serious concerns, and like its huge neighbor to the north, Vietnam is struggling to revamp state-dominated industries that are a legacy of the earlier era of central planning.

THE OUTLOOK: After years of absorbing large flows of foreign investment, Vietnam could see that flow taper off along with global cutbacks. To sustain growth and remain competitive, the country needs to give a freer rein to private businesses, the World Bank and other experts say, and encourage adoption of more advanced technologies.</s>President Donald Trump could bring a big bargaining chip to his upcoming summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: officially ending the Korean War, which the U.S. has technically been involved in since 1950.

Trump was the first U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader.

He and Kim held a one-on-one summit in Singapore in June.

Trump is scheduled to meet with Kim for a two-day summit in Vietnam to discuss denuclearization Feb. 27 and 28, Politico reported.

A peace treaty ending the war is “something [Kim] wants more than almost anything else,” The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Shifting the rhetoric of the summit from denuclearization talks to peace talks would be a “risky move” that Trump may have signaled in his Feb. 5 State of the Union Address, according to the AP.

He did not mention “denuclearization” but did call for a “historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

Trump’s special representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun discussed his “assignment to oversee and lead the broad diplomatic initiative to achieve the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea” during a talk at Stanford University Jan. 31.

“In President Trump, the United States has a leader who, more so than any previous president, is deeply and personally committed to once and for all bringing an end to 70 years of war and hostility on the Korean Peninsula,” Biegun said.

If the two leaders achieve a peace treaty later in February, Kim would meet a goal that originated with his grandfather Kim Il Sung, the AP reported.

An agreement of that nature could bring sanctions relief to North Korea.

It could also reduce the number of U.S. troops south of the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea.

North Korea said in December that it will not denuclearize until the U.S. removes its nuclear threat from the region first.

Trump was optimistic after his meeting with Kim in June, but the North Korean dictator has appeared to push ahead with plans for the development of his weapons programs.

RELATED: US Oil Output Hits 12 Million Barrel-a-Day Milestone Way Ahead of Schedule

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.</s>Vietnam, the location of President Donald Trump's next meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has come a long way since the U.S. abandoned its war against communist North Vietnam in the 1970s.

United into a youthful nation that now numbers 95 million, beginning in the mid-1980s the country embraced global trade to become a production base for South Korea's Samsung and many other manufacturing giants. The "Doi Moi" reforms adopted by its communist rulers, modeled largely on China's transformation into the world's factory floor, could provide a model for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

GOING FOR GROWTH: The Vietnamese economy expanded at an estimated annual rate of just above 7 percent in 2018, fueled by a double-digit increase in manufacturing output. At 5.54 quadrillion Vietnamese dong ($238 billion in 2017), its GDP ranks in the world's top 50 economies. As the economy has grown, poverty rates have fallen and life expectancy has risen, to 76 years.

SAMSUNG FACTOR: Heavy investment by South Korea's Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of computer chips and cell phones, led commitments by other big global manufacturers like Microsoft and Intel. Samsung opened Vietnam's first mobile phone plant in 2009 and now employs more than 100,000 people in its factories there. In 2017, the company accounted for more than a quarter of Vietnam's total exports. Samsung said it had no comment on speculation that Kim might visit one of its factories outside the capital Hanoi, where he is to meet with Trump.

EXPORT BONANZA: By joining the World Trade Organization and regional groupings including the Pacific Rim accord called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Vietnam has leapfrogged its neighbors in taking advantage of lowered tariffs, and its exports have soared. In the meantime, manufacturers from South Korea, Japan and China have crowded in to take advantage of lower costs and other incentives. Exports surged to $214 billion in 2017, up by more than a fifth from the year before. The U.S. is Vietnam's largest export market, at nearly $42 billion in 2017. It's not all cell phones: Vietnam's main exports also include electronics, shoes and apparel.

CHALLENGES: Having just barely reached middle-income status, Vietnam is struggling to raise productivity — the key to ensuring living standards will continue to improve. Economists say the country's productivity is only about a third of China's and much lower than in affluent countries. Heavy reliance on export-led growth leaves the country vulnerable to global downturns. Vietnamese leaders also have emulated China in keeping a tight grip on the media, political dissent and other freedoms. Rural poverty, pollution and corruption are serious concerns, and like its huge neighbor to the north, Vietnam is struggling to revamp state-dominated industries that are a legacy of the earlier era of central planning.

THE OUTLOOK: After years of absorbing large flows of foreign investment Vietnam could see that flow taper off along with global cutbacks. To sustain growth and remain competitive, the country needs to give a freer rein to private businesses, the World Bank and other experts say, and encourage adoption of more advanced technologies.</s>WASHINGTON: Convinced he has forged a budding friendship with Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump frequently boasts that he has made history with the North Korean leader.

But Trump's contention that he is a masterful negotiator will be put to a test during his second summit with Kim on Feb 27-28 in Hanoi as the world waits to see if he can deliver concrete results.

Trump has hailed his "great chemistry" with Kim and voiced delight at "beautiful letters" from the totalitarian leader 30 years his junior.

Trump points out that North Korea has not tested a nuclear bomb or long-range missile in more than a year and says he has saved the world from a devastating war - a feat for which, he is not shy to say, he believes he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

But North Korea's nuclear program remains intact and the Kim dynasty, which has reigned with an iron fist for six decades, is skilled at the art of biding time.

The most atypical of US presidents, Trump has taken a path rejected by his predecessors - negotiating face-to-face with the leader of the reclusive regime. And the real estate mogul believes that his style - direct and brash - can succeed where years of diplomatic drudgework with Pyongyang have failed.

Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that Trump had laid the groundwork for the "possibility of progress," even if the prospects remain uncertain.

"A combination of fear and pain, combined with hope for a better future, may be just the right juxtaposition of sentiments to have instilled in Kim's mind," O'Hanlon said.

"Whether through design or chance, or a bit of both, Trump managed to achieve this mix by 2018," he said.

Trump himself has stayed evasive on what he hopes to achieve in Hanoi, which follows up the historic first summit between the two leaders in Singapore in June.

"I think that North Korea and Chairman Kim have some very positive things in mind, and we'll soon find out," Trump told reporters on Tuesday.

"But I'm in no rush. There's no testing. As long as there's not testing, I'm in no rush," he said.

The two countries remain divided on the very meaning of denuclearization, with the United States wanting North Korea to give up its arsenal and Pyongyang supporting a more general end to nuclear weapons in the region.

What if months or even years go by and North Korea gives up nothing significant?

"I think Trump is calculating that he can run out the clock at least until the end of his first term with this strategy," said Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"A lot may depend on what Hanoi yields," he said.

EYE ON 2020, OR BEYOND?

For Christopher Green, an expert on Korea at the International Crisis Group, the issue of the calendar is central.

Trump faces re-election next year and has already touted North Korea as an achievement, telling Americans after the Singapore summit that they can "sleep well tonight!"

"The major concern is that Trump may be too keen to bring about something that looks to naive, glimpsing eyes like a foreign policy achievement, and won't do the essential legwork to ensure that a durable agreement is reached," Green said.

"Something that looks like an achievement during his time in office may not have the necessary durability to radically alter the face of Northeast Asia," Green said.

"We need to look beyond November 2020 and toward 2030 or 2040. Only then will we know."

And with heads of state personally conducting the diplomacy, there may be little recourse if a new crisis erupts.

Little more than a year ago, relations were in crisis and the two leaders were trading insults in an extraordinary personal way, with Trump calling Kim "little rocket man" and North Korean media branding Trump the "mentally deranged US dotard."

Trump, who now respectfully addresses the young leader as "Chairman Kim," may seize on any symbolic show to prove his diplomacy is working, such as a North Korean offer to destroy - again - part of its key Yongbyon nuclear complex.

"The risk is if Kim decides this unilateral testing moratorium - because it's not in writing - no longer works for him," Narang said. "Then there is no diplomatic exit ramp."</s>HANOI (Reuters) - North Korean special envoy Kim Hyok Chol arrived in Hanoi on Wednesday, a Reuters witness and a source with direct knowledge said, ahead of the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Vietnam’s capital.

Trump and Kim are due to meet in Hanoi next Wednesday and Thursday following their historic first meeting in Singapore in June.

Kim Hyok Chol arrived in Hanoi with a delegation of six North Koreans, a source with direct knowledge of the visit and who was on his flight told Reuters.</s>BANGKOK — A second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is set for Vietnam’s capital from Feb. 27-28.

Trump and Kim met last June in Singapore, outreach the American president has said opened a path to peace. But that face-to-face hasn’t resulted in any solid plan for ridding the North of nuclear weapons.

The Singapore summit made history by simply being the first-ever meeting between sitting leaders of the longtime enemies. It was filled with pageantry and memorable moments, such as the first handshake, walks in a garden, and a brief glimpse inside Trump’s limousine.

This time, observers will be looking for something more concrete.

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Vietnam tightens security at its rail station on the Chinese border ahead of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's visit to Hanoi for his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.