WASHINGTON, Feb 23: Days before a second US-North Korea summit, much rests on the shoulders of a former auto executive trying to find common ground between an American president seeking a big foreign policy win and a North Korean leader who seems unlikely to hand him one.

Stephen Biegun, named Donald Trump's special envoy for North Korea six months ago, flew to Hanoi ahead of the Feb 27-28 meeting in the Vietnamese capital where Trump hopes to get closer to his goal of persuading Pyongyang to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.

In meetings with his North Korean counterpart, Biegun, a 55-year-old former Ford Motor Co FN executive, aims to hammer out a joint summit statement showing concrete progress beyond vague commitments agreed by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their first meeting in June.

It's a tall order, even for someone accustomed to tough assignments.

Before joining Ford as head of international government relations, Biegun was handed the job of giving Sarah Palin a crash course in foreign policy when she was John McCain's 2008 presidential running mate.

Such experience could prove helpful in explaining what is achievable to Trump, who came into office similarly lacking in diplomatic experience and has set his sights on North Korea as one issue he can tout as a major success that has eluded his predecessors.

While Biegun worked for decades as congressional staffer and as a White House foreign policy aide under President George W Bush, his latest appointment was initially greeted with skepticism, given he was primarily a Russia specialist with little exposure to the complex North Korea problem.

But several North Korea experts who have since advised Biegun told Reuters they have been struck by how methodical he was in taking the time to talk to as many of them as possible and described him as a quick learner.

Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico who is among those who has met Biegun, said was encouraged by the way Biegun had made up for his lack of specialist knowledge by seeking out the right people.

"What he’s been doing is learning and gathering things. I’m impressed by what he’s done - he’s got good advisers."

A 16-member team Biegun took with him to Pyongyang for three days of talks earlier this month included missile experts, nuclear experts and specialists in international law.

A Capitol Hill staffer whose Democratic Party has been critical of Trump's personal approach to North Korea, said Biegun's attitude appeared "much more realistic than what we’ve heard from the administration thus far."

"He really stands head and shoulders above the rest ... and comes to this a with a relatively fresh set of eyes, and as someone who isn’t making old assumptions but also who isn’t making the wrong assumptions."

Biegun has also won admirers in South Korea, where one former senior diplomat said he clearly had experience in handling complex issues and knew how Washington works. "Among all the nuclear envoys I've seen for decades, he must be the weightiest," he said.

However, it will take more than intelligence, gravitas, an open mind and political savvy to convince North Korea to abandon a nuclear weapons program its ruling family has long seen as essential to its survival.

Biegun has avoided formal media interviews, but did deliver a wide-ranging speech at Stanford University on Jan. 31, when he admitted that despite months of US-North Korea talks, the two sides still had no agreed definition of the term "denuclearization."

And in spite of Trump's declaration after the last summit that the nuclear threat from North Korea was over, the country has yet to agree to freeze production of fissile material and its missile program, despite a de facto moratorium on nuclear and missile testing since 2017.

Biegun has said he will be seeking both in Hanoi and will also be looking to agree a roadmap for a possibly lengthy post-summit negotiation process.

Yet neither the US intelligence community, nor regional military commanders believe North Korea will agree to give up all of its nuclear weapons.

While welcoming an easing of tensions, critics worry the Trump administration - Biegun included - is now following Pyongyang's playbook by dropping past demands for complete denuclearization before any concessions.

Trump and US officials insist North Korea's complete and verified denuclearization remains the ultimate goal, but experts say the mechanics of a negotiated process mean this could take many years - if it happens at all.

Unlike predecessors, Biegun has had significant direct contact with Trump, including involvement in White House talks with North Korean officials and an Oval Office meeting with the president in December.

But Trump has sometimes demonstrated a tendency to ignore advisers and act on impulse.

Biegun, according to a veteran American North Korea hand,"is a prisoner ... of a president who has no interest in the substance of the issues." "The president's priority is himself - his brand," the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Biegun is also beholden to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a trusted Trump aide with a reputation for following the president’s marching orders and for rarely contradicting him.

While Pompeo has overall control of North Korea policy, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, known for hawkish views on a range of global issues, has appeared to fade into the background on North Korea since his calls for the nation’s rapid disarmament nearly derailed the first summit.

The extent of Bolton's involvement in the Hanoi meeting remains unclear.

Analysts say that for Biegun's methodical approach to prevail he will need to deliver a semblance of progress in Hanoi. They warn Trump's taste for a showy moment and apparent lack of patience with the sort of detailed drawn-out haggling any lasting deal will require could complicate Biegun's task.

A photo Trump tweeted on Christmas Day showing him reading a memo at his desk in the Oval Office while Biegun and White House adviser Allison Hooker stand on his side, looking on, captured the awkwardness of his subordinates' role.

Toby Dalton, of the Nuclear Policy Program at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was among Biegun's advisers, noted he had left himself ample leeway in his Stanford speech for a reason.

"This reflects uncertainly about what US policy is," he said. "US policy is what the president says it is on any given day."</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.

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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.

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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>DANDONG: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's armoured train arrived in China late Saturday ahead of his summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam , according to media reports.The train arrived in the border city of Dandong after 9 pm local time (1300 GMT), according to South Korea 's Yonhap news agency and the specialist outlet NK News , though it was not known whether Kim was on the train.The train's crossing into China follows days of speculation over Kim's travel plans, which remain shrouded in secrecy, as his team gathered in Hanoi ahead of the talks expected next Wednesday and Thursday.Security was tight before the train's arrival, with police cordoning off the riverfront some 100 metres (yards) from the bridge with tape and metal barriers, and leading an AFP journalist out of the area.Guests at a hotel facing the rail bridge from North Korea were suddenly asked to leave on Friday and told it was closed Saturday for impromptu renovations."The train is long and crossed the bridge slower than the tourist train, but its definitely him, there's a lot of police presence," an unidentified source told NK News.Windows on the train were blacked out, the source said, with only headlights turned on as it crossed.Kim has previously travelled in an armoured train to Beijing and, if he is on board, may stop in the Chinese capital on what could be an epic journey to Vietnam, meeting President Xi Jinping prior to his second face-to-face with the US president.Or he could save the meeting for his return trip to debrief his country's sole major ally.The Hanoi summit comes after Trump and Kim met in June in Singapore, producing a vaguely worded agreement on denuclearisation, but progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what the agreement meant.Kim travelled to Singapore last year on a plane lent by Beijing, and it remained unclear whether he would ride all the way to Hanoi by rail -- a nearly 4,000-kilometre (2,500-mile) journey taking more than 60 hours from Pyongyang.Several sources said Kim was expected to arrive in Vietnam by train, stopping at the Dong Dang train station near the China border, then driving on to Hanoi.</s>North Korea leader Kim Jong Un was on a train Sunday to Vietnam for his second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, state media confirmed.

Kim was accompanied by Kim Yong Chol, who has been a key negotiator in talks with the U.S., and Kim Yo Jong, the leader's sister, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Late Saturday, an Associated Press reporter saw a green and yellow train similar to one used in the past by Kim cross into the Chinese border city of Dandong via a bridge.

The Trump-Kim meeting is slated for Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi.

Their first summit last June in Singapore ended without substantive agreements on the North's nuclear disarmament and triggered a months-long stalemate in negotiations as Washington and Pyongyang struggled with the sequencing of North Korea's nuclear disarmament and the removal of U.S.-led sanctions against the North.

It could take more than two days for the train to travel thousands of miles through China to Vietnam.

Vietnam's Foreign Ministry announced Saturday that Kim would pay an official goodwill visit to the country "in the coming days" in response to an invitation by President Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also the general secretary of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party.

In his upcoming meeting with Trump, experts say Kim 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.

While Kim wants to leverage his nuclear and missile program for economic and security benefits, there continue to be doubts on whether he's ready to fully deal away an arsenal that he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.

Last year, North Korea suspended its nuclear and long-range missile tests and unilaterally dismantled its nuclear testing ground and parts of a rocket launch facility without the presence of outside experts, but none of those steps were seen as meaningful cutbacks to the North's weapons capability.

While North Korea has repeatedly demanded that the United States take corresponding measures, including sanctions relief, Washington has called for more concrete steps from Pyongyang toward denuclearization.

Hanoi has been gearing up for the summit with beefed-up security. Officials say the colonial-era Government Guest House in central Hanoi is expected to be the venue for the Trump-Kim meeting, with the nearby Metropole Hotel as a backup. Streets around the two places have been beautified with flowers and the flags of North Korea, the U.S and Vietnam.

Workers were also putting final touches on the International Media Center. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry says some 2,600 members of the foreign press have registered for the event.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has announced a traffic ban along Kim's possible arrival route.

The Communist Party's mouthpiece Nhan Dan newspaper late Friday quoted the Department of Roads as saying the ban will first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger, and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170-kilometer (105-mile) stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7 p.m. Monday to 2 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a complete ban Tuesday on all vehicles from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The People's Committee in Lang Son province, where the Dong Dang railway station is located, issued a statement Friday instructing the road operator to clean the highway stretch and suspend road works, among other things, on Feb. 24-28 as "a political task."</s>A train similar to one used in the past by Kim Jong Un entered China on Saturday evening, possibly carrying the North Korean leader on a multiday journey to Vietnam’s capital for his summit with President Donald Trump.

An Associated Press reporter saw the green and yellow train cross from North Korea into the Chinese border city of Dandong via a bridge.

Russia’s TASS news agency reported hours earlier that Kim had departed from Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, on his personal train. North Korea’s state media has yet to report on whether Kim has set off for Vietnam. Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret.

It could take more than two days for the train to travel thousands of miles through China to Vietnam.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry announced Saturday that Kim would pay an official goodwill visit to the country “in the coming days” in response to an invitation by President Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party.

The Trump-Kim meeting is slated for Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi. Their first summit, last June in Singapore, ended without substantive agreements and triggered a months-long stalemate in negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang as they struggled with the sequencing of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament and the removal of U.S.-led sanctions against the North.

In his upcoming meeting with Trump, experts say Kim 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. While Kim wants to leverage his nuclear and missile program for economic and security benefits, there continue to be doubts on whether he’s ready to fully deal away an arsenal that he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival.

Last year, North Korea suspended its nuclear and long-range missile tests and unilaterally dismantled its nuclear testing ground and parts of a rocket launch facility without the presence of outside experts, but none of those steps were seen as meaningful cutbacks to the North’s weapons capability. While North Korea has repeatedly demanded that the United States take corresponding measures, including sanctions relief, Washington has called for more concrete steps from Pyongyang toward denuclearization.

Hanoi has been gearing up for the summit with beefed-up security. Officials say the colonial-era Government Guest House in central Hanoi is expected to be the venue for the Trump-Kim meeting, with the nearby Metropole Hotel as a backup. Streets around the two places have been beautified with flowers and the flags of North Korea, the U.S and Vietnam.

Workers were also putting final touches on the International Media Center. Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry says some 2,600 members of the foreign press have registered for the event.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has announced a traffic ban along Kim’s possible arrival route.

The Communist Party’s mouthpiece Nhan Dan newspaper late Friday quoted the Department of Roads as saying the ban will first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger, and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170-kilometre (105-mile) stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7 p.m. Monday to 2 p.m. Tuesday, followed by a complete ban Tuesday on all vehicles from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The People’s Committee in Lang Son province, where the Dong Dang railway station is located, issued a statement Friday instructing the road operator to clean the highway stretch and suspend road works, among other things, on Feb. 24-28 as “a political task.”

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.</s>North Korea's will soon make an official visit to Vietnam, said Saturday as it beefed up security on the Chinese border where Kim is expected to cross by train ahead of his summit with US next week.

is hastily preparing for a second summit between Trump and Kim on February 27-28 in Hanoi, and sources have said the North Korean leader is likely to arrive ahead of the meeting for an official visit and to tour industrial zones.

" will pay an official visit to in the coming days," Vietnam's foreign ministry said Saturday in a post on its page, without providing dates.

has not yet publicly confirmed the summit with Trump, and routinely keeps Kim's shrouded in secrecy.

Several sources told AFP Kim is expected to arrive in by train ahead of the summit, stopping at the train station near the border and driving 170 kilometres to by car.

Vietnam on Friday announced the unprecedented move of closing the stretch of road from the station to on February 26 between 6:00 am and 2:00 pm, reported, suggesting Kim could travel on the road between those hours.

Soldiers were deployed to the train station on Saturday and along the road to Hanoi, according to AFP reporters at the scene, who spotted several military vehicles and in the area.

"We are doing security sweeps all the way from to Hanoi and we have to finish by February 24. We are working on orders for the arrival of an important delegation," a soldier told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Security personnel tried to prevent anyone from taking photos and videos in the area and soldiers screened everyone who entered the

The 4,000-kilometre rail journey from to Vietnam via could take two and a half days in Kim's dark green armoured train, which is reportedly outfitted with conference rooms and several sleeping chambers.

He is expected to pass through the Chinese city of Dandong, where guests at a hotel facing the border bridge from were suddenly asked to leave Friday. The hotel was closed Saturday for impromptu renovations.

This will be Kim's inaugural visit to Vietnam, and the first time a North Korean leader has travelled to the country since his grandfather Sung's trip in 1964.

Kim is expected to tack on a visit to and provinces, home to several industrial zones, sources told AFP. is home to a factory, a major South Korean investor and leading exporter from Vietnam.

With its glittering post-war growth, Vietnam has been lauded as an economic model for isolated which has suffered under punishing sanctions.

is pushing for an easing of those sanctions, but Trump has said he will have to make a "meaningful" gesture on the nuclear front if he wants to see them lifted.

Trump told reporters on Friday that reducing the presence of US forces in is "not one of the things on the table" and said he would not reveal his ahead of the meeting.

Though would be happy to see a reduction of US troops in would face pushback from and Tokyo, whose conservative government is deeply wary of the North's intentions.

Teams from the and North Korea are already in Hanoi hashing out pre-summit preparations.

US to Pyongyang and his North Korean counterpart Chol were both seen at the same this week, though neither side confirmed if the pair met face to face.</s>HANOI, Vietnam The Vietnamese capital once trembled as waves of American bombers unleashed their payloads, but when Kim Jong Un arrives here for his summit with President Donald Trump he won’t find rancor toward a former enemy. Instead the North Korean leader will get a glimpse at the potential rewards of reconciliation.

By the time the Vietnam War ended in 1975, tens of thousands of tons of explosives had been dropped on Hanoi and nearly two decades of fighting had killed 3 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans. Vietnam, though victorious, lay devastated by American firepower, with cities in ruins and fields and forests soaked in toxic herbicides and littered with unexploded ordnance.

Despite the conflict’s savagery, what followed was a remarkable rapprochement between wartime foes and it took merely 20 years to restore full relations.

Now some hope Vietnam will offer Kim a road map for his own detente with the United States and that the formerly besieged capital city will be the site of a dramatic resolution to one of the last remaining Cold War conflicts.

While North Korea remains America’s sworn enemy 65 years after the Korean War fighting ceased, Vietnam today stands as a burgeoning partner which even buys lethal U.S. weaponry. Bilateral trade has soared by 8,000 percent over the last two decades and billions of dollars in American investment flows into one of the world’s best performing economies.

And while North Koreans are still taught to loathe Americans by their country’s propaganda machine, in Vietnam there is little animosity.

“I was born after the war and only hear war stories from American films or books,” said Dinh Thanh Huyen, a 19-year-old university student who was waiting in line at a crowded McDonald’s in Hanoi. She said she was happy the former enemies have moved on. “History is for us to learn from, not to hold grudges.”

Kim could take note of the history of win-win rapprochement and how Vietnam’s communist leaders have allowed a capitalistic economy and an open door to the U.S. and other outsiders, all while not sacrificing their tight grip on power. Or he could allow it all to pass him by as he narrows his focus for the Feb. 27-28 summit on tit-for-tat bargaining over nuclear arms and economic sanctions.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke in Hanoi last year about “the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership” the U.S. has come to enjoy with Vietnam and noted Vietnam was able maintain its form of government.

“I have a message for Chairman Kim Jong Un: President Trump believes your country can replicate this path. It’s yours to seize the moment,” he said. “This can be your miracle in North Korea as well.”

To be sure, Vietnam remains a one-party state with a poor human rights record where even moderate critics and dissenters are frequently jailed.

Since the first Trump-Kim summit last June in Singapore, a few small steps have already been taken along a timeline forged by the U.S.-Vietnamese thaw, including Pyongyang turning over remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Korean War, the first such hand-over in more than a decade.

It was the same missing in action issue that heralded U.S.-Vietnamese reconciliation, with the repatriation of American war dead creating an environment for improvement in relations in other areas.

Next came step-by-step lifting of economic sanctions, as Washington encouraged Vietnam’s so-called “doi moi” reform, initiatives launched in 1986 to shed a state-run economy in favor of a market-oriented one open to foreigners.

North Korea has already shown interest in Vietnam’s reforms, sending students and official delegations who returned home with favorable reports. Having enjoyed close relations with North Korea since 1950, Vietnam could be the ideal go-between in nudging Pyongyang to re-engineer its disastrous economy and turn foes to friends.

“Vietnam’s model of development ‘doi moi’ is an important factor in the United States’ larger strategy of drawing North Korea out of its self-imposed isolation as part of the larger process of denuclearizing,” said Carlyle Thayer, a political scientist at The University of New South Wales.

But Thayer and other experts share strong reservations about how much of the U.S.-Vietnamese “miracle” can be duplicated. There are stark differences in the way the North Korea responded once the fighting stopped.

The North slammed shut its doors and slid into a Cold War bunker – and it remains one of the world’s most isolated nations. Vietnam, however, chose to put behind its tragic past and move forward.

Not long after the war, American journalists and official U.S. delegations were allowed entry to a poor, shabby Hanoi, its lovely French colonial buildings moldering from neglect. The only clothes many men had were the baggy green uniforms and pith helmets of the North Vietnamese army. Suspicion was palpable and Westerners, including journalists, were assigned minders to keep tabs on them.

Expecting a hostile reception, the Americans were stunned at the lack of animosity displayed by the average Vietnamese, even those who had lost loved ones to U.S. bombs. Returning American veterans were often signaled out for especially warm welcomes, sometimes tearfully embracing their onetime battlefield enemies while exchanging stories of suffering.

Making such scenes possible were a set of special circumstances. Some were geo-political: Vietnam badly needed a counter-balance that the U.S. could provide to its perennial enemy – neighboring China.

This has taken on special urgency in recent years as Beijing moves aggressively to claim large swaths of the South China Sea. Telling are the exchanges between the U.S. and Vietnamese coast guards and the provision of U.S. patrol boats. Last year the USS Carl Vinson, an American aircraft carrier, made a historic port call in Vietnam, the first of its kind since the war ended.

Vietnam also no longer faced a threat from the United States, whereas North Korea perceives that it does, making abandonment of its nuclear program difficult, perhaps even in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

But an underlying human element was also at work.

“During the Vietnam War Hanoi always drew a distinction between the peace-loving American people and the imperialist American government,” Thayer said. “There was a basis for future reconciliation.”

The face-to-face encounters that followed, serving to ease mutual hostility, never occurred with North Korea. Instead, generations of North Korean children sat in classrooms looking at posters of Americans portrayed as big nosed goblins. A massive anti-American rally loomed large on the annual calendar.

“The Vietnamese saw over the years of our war that many American people and veterans spoke out against the war,” said Bob Mulholland, a prominent Vietnam combat veteran.

And there were powerful advocates of reconciliation, including Sens. John Kerry and the recently deceased John McCain as well as other veterans who quietly returned to Vietnam to help the shattered country.

Although the Vietnam War has begun to fade from the collective memory in both countries, it is not the “forgotten war” that the Korean conflict has long been known as. With peace and greater prosperity have come fresh connections forged by a younger generation.

Near the McDonald’s in Hanoi’s old quarter, not far from a Starbucks, the area is closed to traffic each weekend and entertainers, including American buskers, take to streets now strung with U.S. and North Korean flags. Vietnamese youth can be seen mingling with young American travelers.

Just a short stroll away, tourist Brian Walker was taking in Hanoi’s Military War Museum, fronted by the wreckage of an American B-52 shot down while bombing the city.

“For many Americans, it may be a country of a bloody war that we took part in,” said 28-year-old social worker from New York City. “But coming here, all I see is people with big smiles, good food and a beautiful landscape.”</s>If there is anyone keeping his fingers crossed for President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, to agree on how to denuclearize the North when they meet in Vietnam this month, it is President Moon Jae-in of South Korea.

With no quick fix available for South Korea’s stubborn economic troubles, Moon’s best chance for reversing his falling approval ratings rests on whether he can jump-start his signature policy of helping advance the North’s denuclearization and improving inter-Korean ties.

But that depends on Trump and Kim striking a denuclearization deal when they meet February 27-28 in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, that is significant enough for Washington and the United Nations to ease sanctions and create room for Moon to push his ambitious plans for economic cooperation with North Korea.

“But if the second US-North Korea summit fails, there will be more criticism blaming President Moon,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “There will be more critics accusing him of having been too optimistic and naïve, misreading North Korea’s intentions and misrepresenting them to the Americans.”

Since his election in 2017, Moon has dedicated himself to mediating between Washington and Pyongyang, tirelessly selling Trump on the merits of negotiating with Kim. In doing so, he has bet so heavily on Trump and Kim reaching a denuclearization deal that his own political fortunes at home have become increasingly tied to the whims of the two unpredictable leaders.

Moon’s approval ratings soared higher than 80 per cent last spring when he met Kim twice on the inter-Korean border to help defuse a possible military confrontation between the United States and North Korea. That set the stage for the historic June summit meeting between Kim and Trump in Singapore.

But Moon’s ratings have since plummeted below 50 per cent amid stalled talks between Washington and Pyongyang over how to carry out the vague promise Trump and Kim made in Singapore to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and establish a permanent peace between their countries. Moon flew to Pyongyang in September to meet Kim again to break the logjam between Washington and Pyongyang.

But the deadlock remains, prompting Moon’s critics to question whether he has oversold Kim’s willingness to denuclearize.

When he met Moon in September, Kim promised to become the first North Korean leader to visit Seoul. But with his negotiations with Washington stalled, the year ended without Kim visiting as Moon said he would, further raising doubts about Moon’s influence over Kim.

While Moon remained preoccupied with North Korea, domestic affairs turned against him. The popularity of his governing Democratic Party has plunged as its politicians have been tainted by #MeToo accusations and other scandals. South Koreans in their 20s, a traditional support base for progressives like Moon, have been fast losing faith in his government because of his inability to create more jobs, according to the polling company Realmeter.

Older, more conservative South Koreans have rallied in central Seoul almost every weekend in recent months, criticizing as dangerous Moon’s economic policies and his rapprochement efforts with the North.

But Moon remains convinced that Trump’s strong desire to achieve something none of his predecessors could accomplish — ending the North Korean nuclear crisis — and Kim’s desperate need to improve his country’s economy can create a singular opportunity for both Koreas. Trump and Kim, he says, can denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and end the tensions there, opening the way for economically integrating the impoverished North, with its cheap labor, and the South, whose slowing economy needs a new source of growth.

“We have never had an opportunity like this since the Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, and we should not miss it because it will never come again,” Moon said last month.

Longtime North Korea observers saw the current stalemate coming when Trump and Kim ended their Singapore meeting without sorting out key details, especially what is meant by the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” In the past, the North used that term when it argued that it would give up its nuclear weapons only when the United States ceased hostilities, including ending its military presence in South Korea.

Moon says Kim has made a strategic decision to give up his nuclear weapons in a “verifiable and irreversible way” and focus on rebuilding his country’s economy should Washington take corresponding actions, like easing sanctions, to prove that it is no longer hostile. He also said last month that there was “no difference” between the United States and North Korean definitions of “complete denuclearization,” saying it meant dismantling all North Korean nuclear weapons and fissile materials and their production facilities.

“First, we ought to take him at his word,” Gen. Vincent Brooks, who retired as commander of the U.S. military in South Korea in November, told “PBS NewsHour” last month, referring to Kim. “And that’s not an easy thing to accept, especially given the track record of North Korea. But this is a new leader in North Korea.”

Trump, who in 2017 threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea and derided Kim as “Little Rocket Man” because of his provocative missile tests, now promises to help rebuild the country’s economy if it denuclearizes.

“North Korea will become a different kind of rocket — an economic one!” he said on Twitter this month.

But last month, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, told Congress that North Korea was “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”

Nevertheless, Washington’s special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, spent three days in Pyongyang this month exchanging “detailed and exhaustive” lists of what the two governments wanted from each other to make denuclearization possible, said Kim Eui-kyeom, Moon’s spokesman, after Biegun briefed South Korean officials on his trip.

But with the Hanoi summit meeting less than a week away, South Korean officials said, the two sides are still bargaining to settle the hardest part of their negotiations: figuring out what specific actions they could take in order to start denuclearization.

All this makes the Hanoi meeting as much a gamble for Moon as for Trump and Kim.

Unlike Kim, who has hedged his bets by improving ties with China, Moon has put all his eggs in Trump’s basket, analysts said.

“Presidents Moon and Trump are in the same boat on this,” said Kim Sung-han, a former vice foreign minister of South Korea who teaches at Korea University in Seoul.</s>HANOI, Vietnam -- Vietnam has announced an unprecedented traffic ban along a possible arrival route of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ahead of his second summit with President Donald Trump in Hanoi next week, state media reported.

The Communist Party's mouthpiece Nhan Dan newspaper late Friday quoted Vietnam's Department of Roads as saying the ban will first apply to trucks 10 tons or bigger, and vehicles with nine seats or more on the 170-kilometre (105-mile) stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, the border town with China, to Hanoi from 7 p.m. on Monday to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, followed by a complete ban Tuesday on all vehicles from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The summit is slated for Wednesday and Thursday.

It gave no other details. The move implies that Kim may take a train and disembark at the Dong Dang railway station and proceed by car to Hanoi.

It is not known if he will travel by train from Pyongyang via China or fly to a nearby Chinese city. Kim's overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret.

On Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Kim will pay an official goodwill visit to Vietnam "in the coming days" in response to the invitation of President Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam.

The People's Committee in Lang Son province, where the Dong Dang railway station is located, issued a statement Friday instructing the road operator to clean the stretch of the highway and suspend road works among other things to serve "a political task" on Feb. 24-28.

The second summit in Hanoi takes place following the historic meeting in Singapore last June where Kim and Trump reached a vaguely worded commitment from North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapon program.

Kim travelled to Singapore by plane on loan from China.

Hanoi has been gearing up for the summit with beefed up security. Officials say the colonial-era Government Guest House in central Hanoi is expected to be the venue of the meeting, with the nearby Metropole Hotel as a backup.

Streets around the two places have been beautified with flowers and flags of North Korea, the U.S and Vietnam.

Workers were also putting final touches on the International Media Center. The Foreign Ministry says some 2,600 members of the foreign press have registered for the event.</s>HANOI, Vietnam — The Latest on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s travels to the summit with President Donald Trump in Vietnam (all times local):

A train similar to one used in the past by Kim Jong Un has entered China, possibly carrying the North Korean leader on a multiday journey to Vietnam’s capital for his summit with President Donald Trump.

An Associated Press reporter saw the green and yellow train cross into the Chinese border city of Dandong through a bridge on Saturday evening.

Russia’s TASS news agency reported hours earlier that Kim departed from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on his personal train.

The Trump-Kim meeting is slated for Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi. Their first summit last June in Singapore ended without substantive agreements on the North’s nuclear disarmament and triggered a months-long stalemate in negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.

Vietnam has announced an unprecedented traffic ban along a possible arrival route of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ahead of his second summit with President Donald Trump in Hanoi next week.

The Communist Party’s mouthpiece Nhan Dan newspaper quoted the Roads Department as saying the ban will affect the 105-mile stretch of Highway One from Dong Dang, on the border with China, to Hanoi.

It implies Kim may take a train and disembark at the Dong Dang railway station and proceed by car to Hanoi. It is not known if he will travel by train from Pyongyang via China or fly to a nearby Chinese city. Kim’s overseas travel plans are routinely kept secret.

The summit is slated for Wednesday and Thursday.
The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry announces that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will make an official visit to the country in the coming days, ahead of the upcoming summit between him and U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi.