A week after US President Donald Trump called off the historic summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, he has announced that it’s back on.

According to BBC, Trump made the revelation on Friday after receiving a letter from Kim hand-delivered by senior North Korean envoy, Kim Yong-chol, to the White House.

Trump, speaking to reporters about the letter, had said it was “very interesting,” but later revealed he hadn’t read it yet.

The summit will take place on June 12 as earlier planned, he said.

We’ll be meeting on June 12th in Singapore. It went very well. We’re meeting with the chairman on June 12 and I think it’s probably going to be a very successful — ultimately a successful process

He dismissed the aggressive statements earlier received from North Korea, which he had given as a reason for the earlier cancellation, saying:</s>WASHINGTON — After a week of hard-nosed negotiation, diplomatic gamesmanship and no shortage of theatrics, President Donald Trump has announced that the historic nuclear-weapons summit he had cancelled with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is back on.

The June 12 meeting in Singapore, the first between heads of the technically still-warring nations, is meant to begin the process of ending North Korea’s nuclear program, and Trump said he believes Kim is committed to that goal. The announcement puts back on track a high-risk summit that could be a legacy-defining moment for the American leader, who has matched his unconventional deal-making style with the mercurial Kim government.

Despite recently envisioning Nobel laurels, Trump worked on Friday to lower expectations for a quick breakthrough.

“We’re going to deal, and we’re going to really start a process,” Trump said. He spoke from the South Lawn of the White House after seeing off a senior Kim deputy who spent more than an hour with him in the Oval Office. Much had been made of a letter his visitor was bringing from the North Korean leader, but Trump’s comments left it unclear when he had even managed to take a look at it.

The president said it was likely that more than a single meeting would be necessary to bring about his goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. He said, “I think you’re going to have a very positive result in the end, not from one meeting.”

In the latest sign of hostility cooling down but hopes kept in check, Trump said he had unilaterally put a hold on hundreds of new sanctions against the North, without Kim’s government even asking. “I’m not going to put them on until such time as the talks break down,” he said.

“I don’t even want to use the term ‘maximum pressure’ anymore,” Trump added, referencing his preferred term for the punishing U.S. economic sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to its nuclear and ballistic missile tests. But he said he would not remove current sanctions until the North took steps to denuclearize.

Trump warmly greeted Kim Yong Chol, the vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee, in the Oval Office, where a brief encounter meant for the hand delivery of a personal letter from Kim Jong Un became a longer discussion of areas of disagreement between the two countries.

After the meeting, Trump posed for photos with Kim Yong Chol outside the Oval Office, and they talked amiably at Kim’s black SUV before he was driven away.

Trump told reporters he hadn’t yet read the letter from the North Korean leader and added with a smile, “I may be in for a big surprise, folks.” But minutes earlier, he had described the note as “a very interesting letter,” and teased journalists about revealing its contents.

Later Friday, deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley confirmed that Trump had read the letter, but he did not reveal its contents.

Plans for the meeting in Singapore had been cast into doubt after Trump suddenly announced his withdrawal last week, only to announce a day later that it could still get back on track. White House officials cast the roller-coaster public statements as reflective of efforts by each leader to test the resolve of the other.

Trump cited increasingly bellicose statements from the North — and ignored messages about summit logistics — when he announced he was backing out of the summit in a strongly worded letter. He cited “tremendous anger and open hostility” by Pyongyang but also urged Kim Jong Un to call him. By the next day, he was signalling the event could be back on after a conciliatory response from North Korea.

Within days, three teams of officials in the U.S., Singapore and the Korean demilitarized zone began meeting on preparations for the summit.

Trump has declined to publicly acknowledge whether he’s spoken directly with Kim Jong Un ahead of the talks.

Kim Yong Chol, whisked to the Oval Office by White House chief of staff John Kelly, is the most senior North Korean to visit in 18 years, a symbolic sign of easing tensions after fears of war escalated amid North Korean nuclear and missile tests last year.

Questions remain about what a deal on the North’s nuclear weapons would look like. Trump said Friday he believed Kim Jong Un would agree to denuclearization, but the two countries have offered differing visions of what that entails. Despite Kim’s apparent eagerness for a summit with Trump, there are many doubts that he would fully relinquish his nuclear arsenal, which he may see as his guarantee of survival.

U.S. defence and intelligence officials have repeatedly assessed the North to be on the threshold the capability to strike anywhere in the continental U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile — a capacity that Trump and other U.S. officials have said they would not tolerate.

Defence ministers from Japan and South Korea offered very different views of the North Korean leader at an international security conference in Singapore. Japan’s defence chief urged caution in dealing with North Korea, while his South Korean counterpart said there was no reason to question the North Korean leader’s sincerity.

Trump has promised that he will provide “protections” for Kim and his government in return for giving up the nuclear program. He also indicated that South Korea, China, and Japan would be prepared to invest in the North to boost its besieged economy.

Kim Yong Chol left his hotel in New York City early Friday for the trip to Washington in a convoy of SUVs. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the former CIA chief who has travelled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong Un twice in the past two months, said he believed the country’s leaders are “contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift, one that their country has not been prepared to make before.”

Kim Yong Chol was allowed into the United States despite being on a U.S. sanctions list, and granted special permission to travel outside the New York area to meet with the president.

Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen in Beijing and Matthew Lee in New York contributed.</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Thursday that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will “hopefully” happen on June 12 — and that he may need a second or third meeting to hammer out a deal.

He also said there may be no meeting at all.

“We’ll see and hopefully we’ll have a meeting on the 12th, that’s going along very well but I want it to be meaningful,” the president said before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews. “It doesn’t mean it gets all done at one meeting. Maybe you have to have a second or third, and maybe we’ll have none, but it’s in good hands. That I can tell you. You know that, actually.“

Trump has continued to be coy about plans for a summit with Kim after sending a letter to the North Korean leader last week calling off the meeting because of heated rhetoric from the repressive regime.

But pre-summit work has continued and Trump has since said he would still like the historic sitdown to happen on June 12 in Singapore.

Trump’s latest comments came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was meeting on Thursday morning with North Korean official Kim Yong Chol in New York to discuss preparations.

Trump said he expects the North Korean delegation to travel to Washington on Friday to deliver a letter from Kim Jong Un, according to a pool report.

The president on Thursday also briefly tweeted: “Very good meetings with North Korea.“</s>US President Donald Trump has played down the chances of a quick breakthrough in talks with North Korea about its nuclear arsenal, as the top US diplomat and a senior official from Pyongyang wrapped up two days of negotiations.

Trump, in a brief interview with Reuters aboard Air Force One on the way to Texas, said he was still hoping to hold an unprecedented summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12 in Singapore.

"I'd like to see it done in one meeting," he said on Thursday. "But often times that's not the way deals work. There's a very good chance that it won't be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it'll get done at some point."

It was not clear if Trump meant he would need a second summit with Kim to reach the US goal of persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms or if he believed more lower-level talks were needed.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and high-ranking North Korean official Kim Yong Chol concluded two days of meetings in New York on Thursday aimed at clearing the way for the summit.

"Our two countries face a pivotal moment in our relationship in which it could be nothing short of tragic to let this opportunity go to waste," Pompeo said after the talks.

North Korea, whose nuclear ambitions have been a source of world tension for decades, has made advances in missile technology in recent years but Trump has sworn not to allow it to develop nuclear missiles that could hit the US.

He wants North Korea to "denuclearise", meaning to get rid of its nuclear arms, in return for relief from economic sanctions, but the leadership in Pyongyang is believed to regard nuclear weapons as crucial to its survival and has rejected unilaterally disarming.

Trump said the North Korean envoy would most likely visit the White House on Friday to present him with a letter from Kim Jong Un.

A letter from Kim might be in response to a comment from Trump last Thursday when he cancelled the summit, accusing Pyongyang of hostility, but urged the North Korean leader to "call me or write" if he had a change of heart.</s>SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A top lieutenant of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in the United States conducting one of three sets of parallel talks aimed at salvaging a summit between Kim and President Donald Trump.

Kim Yong Chol is meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York to finalize plans for the summit, while lower-level officials have been meeting at the inter-Korean border and in Singapore for other pre-summit negotiations.

A look at what is at stake in the three sets of talks:

Kim Yong Chol is likely to convey to Pompeo that Kim Jong Un is serious about the summit and also to discuss the contents of a joint statement to be issued at its end.

Some experts say major thorny issues are still unsettled between the two countries, and that is why a senior official like Kim Yong Chol has traveled to the United States to narrow the gap.

Trump abruptly canceled the summit last Thursday before quickly reversing course and announcing the meeting could happen. His decision came amid widespread doubt in the United States that North Korea would be willing to actually scrap a nuclear program it has struggled for decades to build.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who met Kim Jong Un last Saturday, said the North Korean leader is uncertain whether he can trust Trump's promise to provide a security guarantee if North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons.

Given these basic concerns, Kim Yong Chol's talks with Pompeo are likely to focus on a possible compromise between Washington's push for a speedy nuclear disarmament and North Korea's preference for more gradual steps matched by corresponding benefits from the U.S.

Kim Yong Chol, 72, is the most senior North Korean official to visit the United States since 2000. His official title is vice chairman of the ruling Workers' Party. He previously headed North Korea's military intelligence agency and was believed to be behind two attacks in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans and a 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

U.S. and North Korean officials started talks on the North's side of a Korean border village on Sunday to set the agenda for the summit. The village is inside the mine-strewn 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide Demilitarized Zone, a buffer created at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

The U.S. delegation is headed by Sung Kim, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines who served as America's top negotiator to now-stalled six-nation talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament, and as its ambassador to Seoul. In 2008, he witnessed North Korea's destruction of the cooling tower at its main nuclear complex in a show of good faith with the United States. In recent years, however, satellite photos have indicated that North Korea has restarted its plutonium reactor at the complex.

His North Korean counterpart is Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, the North's highest-ranking female diplomat. A recent statement by Choe threatening to scuttle the summit and warning Washington of a nuclear showdown led Trump to temporarily cancel the summit, citing "open hostility" from the North.

The two sides are believed to have exchanged their countries' views on North Korea's denuclearization, America's security assurances and other issues. South Korean media said they wrapped up their talks on Wednesday after Kim Yong Chol's departure for New York.

Choe served as an English-language interpreter during the six-party talks, while Sung Kim, a Korean American, is fluent in Korean. Analysts say that is likely to have smoothed their talks because they could understand each other even when they were speaking their own languages at the negotiating table.

This meeting is to plan protocol, security and other logistical issues and might also include determining when and where in Singapore the summit would be held.

The two countries originally planned to hold the summit in Singapore on June 12. After putting the summit back on track, Trump tweeted Friday that it "will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th, and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date."

A delegation led by another of Kim Jong Un's trusted aides, Kim Chang Son, flew to Singapore on Monday night. South Korean media reported that he began talks with Joe Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, who is in Singapore with other U.S. officials.

No details have emerged about the talks. Possible venues for the summit include Singapore's presidential palace, the Shangri-La hotel and the Marina Bay Sands hotel.

Kim Chang Son served as Kim Jong Un's chief of staff after the 34-year-old leader took power in late 2011. His current official title is a departmental director at the State Affairs Commission, which is headed by Kim Jong Un.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>SEOUL, June 1 (Reuters) - North Korea’s will for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula remains “unchanged, consistent and fixed,” said leader Kim Jong Un, according to the North’s state news agency on Friday.

Making the remarks in a meeting with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kim added he hoped North Korea-U.S. relations and denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula would both be solved on a “stage-by-stage” basis, KCNA said.

The report also said Kim and Lavrov agreed to boost exchanges and cooperation between North Korea and Russia, with the two agreeing on a bilateral summit this year.</s>To meet or not to meet — that is the question everyone is asking about President Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un.

The two leaders have gone back-and-forth on whether they will hold a historic summit this summer as a push for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula continues. After initially accepting Kim’s invitation, Trump announced he was pulling out of the summit in a letter to the North Korean leader in May.

But since then, as talks between officials have continued, Trump has suggested the summit could still happen.

Read on for a look at how the meeting came about, fell apart and potentially came back together.

Trump accepted Kim’s invitation to meet in early March, the White House said.

“President Trump has said for some time that he was open to talks and he would eventually meet with Kim when conditions were right,” then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said. “And I think in the president’s judgement that time has arrived now.”

It wasn’t until May when the date for the summit was publicly set: June 12. Trump said in a tweet that he and Kim would “both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace.”

The meeting was scheduled to take place in Singapore.

Later in May, Trump began to suggest a reverse in course on whether the meeting would take place as North Korean officials threatened to cancel talks.

“If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later. You never know about deals. I’ve made a lot of deals,” Trump said on May 22. “You never really know. It may not work out for June 12.”

The comments came after a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House.

Later, after Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News Kim had “asked” for the meeting, North Korea’s vice foreign minister accused the U.S. of “misleading the public opinion as if we have invited them to sit with us.”

“We will neither beg the U.S. for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us,” Choe Sun Hui reportedly said.

Trump announced on May 24 that he decided to pull out of the summit in an open letter to Kim.

“I was very much looking forward to being there with you,” Trump wrote. “Sadly … I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”

“I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only dialogue that matters,” Trump continued. “Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you.”

The White House also revealed that North Korean officials had stopped coming to recent meetings regarding the summit.

After Trump pulled out of the summit, North Korea said it was still willing to come to the table.

“We express our willingness to sit down face-to-face with the U.S. and resolve issues anytime and in any format,” North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan said on May 25, according to Korean Central News Agency.

Trump suggested a summit could still take place in June in a May 25 tweet.

“We are having very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the Summit, which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th, and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date,” Trump said.

Kim and Moon held a surprise meeting on May 26 on the North Korean side of the demilitarized zone reportedly to discuss a path forward for the summit with Trump.

Trump said U.S. officials arrived in North Korea for discussions about the summit on May 27. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, “We continue to prepare for a meeting between the President and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”

“Our United States team has arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself,” Trump tweeted. “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!”

U.S. officials also reportedly met with Kim Chang Son, the North Korean leader’s chief of staff, in Singapore on May 28.

“We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea,” Trump said in a tweet the following day. “Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more.”

Kim Yong Chol, one of Kim’s closest aides and North Korea’s former military intelligence chief, met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York City on May 30.

The two are also expected to engage in a “day full of meetings” on May 31, according to the White House.

Pompeo met with Kim in April, before he was sworn in as secretary of state, Trump has said.</s>Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Donald Trump: ‘It’s a get-to-know-you situation’

Donald Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore on 12 June is back on, the US president says, a week after it was scrapped.

Mr Trump made the announcement after talks with a senior North Korean envoy at the White House.

The envoy, General Kim Yong-chol, hand-delivered a letter from the North Korean leader to President Trump.

Mr Trump at first said the letter was "very interesting" but later said he had not yet opened it.

He also said the issue of formally ending the Korean War would be on the table in Singapore.

The 1950-53 conflict only ended with a truce, not a final peace treaty.

"We'll be meeting on June 12th in Singapore. It went very well," President Trump told reporters on the White House lawn.

"We've got to know their people very well," he added.

Mr Trump cautioned that the summit might not achieve a final deal on the North's controversial nuclear programme.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US-North Korea: Trump gets an unusually large letter

"I never said it goes in one meeting. I think it's going to be a process, but the relationships are building and that's very positive," he said.

The historic meeting between Mr Trump and Kim Jong-un would be the first between sitting US and North Korean leaders. President Trump has offered to help rebuild the North's economy if it scraps its nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-un says he is committed to "denuclearisation" in some form but his precise demands are unclear.

Two weeks of on-off negotiations

16 May: North Korea says it may pull out of the summit, accusing the US of reckless statements and sinister intentions

24 May: Donald Trump cancels the summit, blaming "tremendous anger and open hostility" from the North

26 May: Kim Jong-un and South Korea's Moon Jae-in meet for surprise talks at the demilitarised border between the two countries

1 June: Senior North Korean envoy General Kim Yong-chol delivers a letter from Mr Kim in person at the White House. Mr Trump says the summit on 12 June is back on

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Singapore has been getting ready for the US-North Korea summit

Gen Kim Yong-chol's visit to Washington came a day after he met US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York.

Mr Pompeo described their talks about denuclearisation "substantive".

"President Trump and I believe Chairman Kim is the kind of leader who can make those kinds of decisions. And that in the coming weeks and months, we will have the opportunity to test whether or not this is the case," he said.

Mr Kim's letter reportedly expresses his interest in meeting without making any significant concessions or threats in regards to denuclearisation, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing a foreign government official who was briefed on the contents.

Trump the diplomat basks in the spotlight

Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington

Image copyright Getty Images

This is Trump diplomacy, unfolding in real time. If it's not what the world expects, if it's statecraft as we've never seen it before, that's because this is a president unlike any the American people have elected before.

From "fire and fury" to a relationship "as good as it's been in a long time". The summit is on, then it's off, now it's on again. The president, as witnessed by his impromptu 16 minute question-and-answer session with gathered reporters, is basking in the world's spotlight as he conducts these historic negotiations.

Passing legislation is hard. Coping with the Russia investigation is infuriating. Welcoming to the White House the "second most powerful man in North Korea", as Mr Trump called Kim Yong-chol, is comparatively easy.

Even as Mr Trump heralded the progress being made, he was downplaying expectations for the upcoming summit, which he said was never planned to end in some grand signing ceremony.

For the moment, it appears the Singapore meeting will be only a first step - a chance for a historic photo-op and a hope for breakthroughs to come.

For a president who many thought last year was barrelling toward war, however, that appears more than enough.

How did we get here?

North Korea has carried out six nuclear tests and numerous tests of ballistic missiles, all the while maintaining a barrage of belligerent rhetoric against its enemies, particularly the US.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The nuclear word Trump and Kim can't agree on

It claims to have developed a nuclear weapon small enough to be carried by a long-range missile, although this remains unverified.

Previous attempts to negotiate with North Korea have failed, but earlier this year Pyongyang held direct talks with Seoul and the two Korean leaders held a historic summit in April.

With relations thawing, the US has pledged to help rebuild North Korea's economy if it agrees to give up its nuclear weapons.

But the US wants denuclearisation first and it is unclear whether Mr Kim will agree to fully abandon his nuclear arsenal.</s>Mr Trump told reporters on Thursday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is having “very good meetings”.

He said he believes the North Koreans may come to Washington on Friday and that a letter will be “delivered to me from Kim Jong Un”.

Mr Trump said he “will see what happens”, adding: “Hopefully we will have a meeting on the 12th.”</s>North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is known for pushing the envelope with threats and bluster as he seeks to leverage his nuclear weapons program into security and economic benefits for his country. But lately he's gained notoriety for his envelopes alone.

President Donald Trump on Friday declared that his on-and-off summit with Kim was on again. The announcement came after Trump hosted a senior North Korean envoy at the White House and he delivered a personal letter from Kim that was inside a white envelope nearly as large as a folded newspaper.

Trump has not yet revealed what was written in the letter, but he sure seemed happy to get it. A photo showed a grinning Trump holding up the envelope alongside Kim Yong Chol, the most senior North Korean to visit the White House in 18 years, as they posed in the Oval Office in front of a portrait of Thomas Jefferson.

The photo made rounds on social media, where theories abound about why Kim would have sent Trump what seemed like a comically oversized letter.

Did Kim, a third-generation heredity leader, think Trump would share his love for lavish gestures and things grandiose? After spending months trading insults and war threats with him, has Kim learned that the way to influence Trump is to appeal to his ego — something South Korean President Moon Jae-in seemed to try in April when he openly vouched for Trump as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize?

No one outside North Korea likely knows the real reason for the letter's size. It could just be that's how Kim likes it.

Moon, who lobbied hard for nuclear negotiations between Trump and Kim, received a letter of similar size from Kim during February's Winter Olympics in which he expressed a desire for an inter-Korean summit.

Kim's letter to Moon was personally delivered by Kim's sister, who attended the Olympics as a special envoy, and was covered by a blue folder emblazoned with a golden seal.

Analysts say the gesture of sending the letter itself is part of the meticulous steps North Korea is taking to present Kim as a legitimate international statesman who is reasonable and capable of negotiating solutions and making deals.

Following a provocative 2017 in which his engineers tested a purported thermonuclear warhead and long-range missiles that could target American cities, Kim has engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months in what's seen as an attempt to break out of isolation and obtain relief from sanctions decimating his country's economy.

While trying to communicate its willingness to embrace Western diplomatic norms, Pyongyang has put in painstaking efforts to maintain reciprocity with Washington and Seoul, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Kim Yong Chol's trip to Washington was clearly a response to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's travelling to Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, twice in recent weeks for pre-summit negotiations with Kim. Likewise, Kim's letter to Trump would have been a reciprocal response to Trump's own letter to Kim on May 24 that temporarily shelved the highly anticipated meeting, Yang said.

In his letter printed on White House stationery, Trump, in an uncharacteristically warm and congenial tone, said he was canceling the summit because of North Korea's harsh comments about U.S. officials. But he also told Kim "please do not hesitate to call me or write."

North Korea then issued an unusually conciliatory response to Trump's letter, with senior diplomat Kim Kye Gwan saying in a statement that Pyongyang had "highly appreciated" Trump's willingness to hold a summit, calling it a "bold decision, which any other U.S. presidents dared not." Hours later, Trump said the summit was potentially back on.

Kim's letter to Trump on Friday will probably borrow much of the language from the statement of his vice foreign minister, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.

"Kim would begin by praising Trump's leadership and his 'bold decision' to build up the summit," said Koh, who is also a policy adviser to the South Korean president. "He will then talk about denuclearization, ending hostility and normalizing relations between the countries."

Because of the directness and weight of formality they provide, Kim might see personal letters as an important way to communicate with leaders of countries the North never had close ties with, Koh said.

This sets Kim apart from his father and grandfather, who were never bold proponents of letter diplomacy and mostly limited the exchange of letters and telegrams with traditional ally Beijing and, to a lesser extent, Moscow.

It remains unclear whether North Korean Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok was carrying a letter from the late Kim Jong Il, the second North Korean leader, when he visited former President Bill Clinton at the White House in 2000.
U.S. President Donald Trump officially announces that the summit will resume as scheduled following a White House meeting with North Korean general Kim Yong-chol.