Even just preparing for talks changes North Korean and US incentives in ways that make us all less likely to be obliterated in a fiery nuclear inferno. That’s good!The biggest risk was probably always an accident or miscalculation that slid into unintended war, or maybe a unilateral US strike that escalated out of control.This more or less takes those scenarios off the table. Both sides now have reason to reduce rather than increase tensions, to read one another’s actions as peaceful rather than hostile and to preserve the diplomatic efforts in which both have invested political capital.Still, that only lasts until the talks themselves.Usually, before high-level talks like these, both sides spend a long time telegraphing their expected outcomes.Such signals serve as public commitments, both to the other side of the negotiation and to citizens back home. It’s a way for both sides to test each other’s demands and offers, reducing the risk of surprise or embarrassment.That is not really how things have proceeded with the United States and North Korea. Trump has already committed to granting North Korea one of its most desired concessions: a high-level meeting between the heads of state.In exchange, North Korea has not publicly committed to anything. It has, quite cannily, channeled its public communications through South Korea , making it easier to renege.Further, Trump has declared “denuclearisation” as his minimal acceptable outcome for talks, making it harder for him to accept a more modest (but more achievable!) outcome and costlier for him to walk away.The table is now set in such a way that virtually any outcome is a win for North Korea, but only a very narrow and difficult range of outcomes will save the United States from an embarrassing failure.The North Koreans can walk away more freely, while the Americans will be more desperate to come home with some sort of win. It’s a formulation that puts the Americans at significant disadvantage before talks even begin.It’s worth belaboring the costs of skipping the usual process of mutual public signaling.South Korean officials have said Kim is willing to enter talks for “denuclearisation” — there’s that word again — which is perhaps why Trump seems to believe this will happen.But Duyeon Kim, a Seoul-based analyst, writes in a column in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that “denuclearisation” means vastly different things to the United States and North Korea.Americans understand the word as describing North Korea’s full nuclear disarmament, which is very difficult to imagine happening.But North Koreans, she writes, tend to mean it as a kind of mutual and incremental disarmament in which the United States also gives up weapons.Normally, the United States and North Korea would have issued months, even years, of public statements on their goals for direct talks, to clear all this up.But, again, the Americans have made splashy public commitments while letting the North Koreans get by without doing the same.It’s practically an axiom of international diplomacy that you only bring heads of state together at the very end of talks, after lower-level officials have done the dirty work.Negotiators need to be free to back down from demands. Or to contradict themselves. Or to play good cop, bad cop. Or to walk away. Lower-level officials can lose face or sacrifice credibility for the sake of talks. Heads of state are much too constrained.Robert E. Kelly, a professor at South Korea’s Pusan National University, wrote on Twitter that, in a more typical process, “there would be a series of concessions and counterconcessions building trust and credibility over time (likely years) eventually rising to a serious discussion of denuclearisation.”Instead, the Trump administration is jumping straight to the last step.There is little obvious gain in skipping over a process that is intended to lock North Korea into public commitments, test what is achievable and ensure maximum US leverage and flexibility.Wouldn’t this be a good moment to have a US ambassador to South Korea? Or an undersecretary of state for arms control and international security?Both posts are empty. The desk for assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs is occupied by a respected but interim official who has clashed with the White House . Her boss, the undersecretary for political affairs, is retiring.Trump lacks the institutional support and assistance that more experienced presidents found essential. There will be fewer high-level diplomats to run parallel talks, fewer midlevel officials to assist and brief the president, fewer analysts to feel out North Korean intentions and capabilities.This is why the emerging conventional wisdom among analysts, as summed up by The Economist , is that “Mr. Trump — a man who boasts about his television ratings and who is bored by briefings and scornful of foreign alliances — could end up being played like a gold-plated violin.”Trump’s headstrong personalisation of North Korea policy may be the most significant aspect of all this.It means that talks and their outcome will be determined, to an unprecedented degree, by Trump’s personal biases and impulses. By his mood at the time of talks. By his particular style of negotiation.Kelly expressed concern over Trump’s “chaotic management style, erratic, moody personality and chronic staffing problems.”He added, “That’s not ideology talking. I am a registered Republican and worked once for a GOP congressman.”Trump’s negotiating record as president, mostly focused on domestic legislative matters, is instructive.He has tended to oscillate unpredictably between policies, throwing talks over the budget or health care into chaos. He has set members of his own party against one another, weakening their position against Democrats. And he has offered the Democrats sweeping concessions on a whim, to the surprise of his party.When legislative efforts have stalled, Trump has at times lashed out. In domestic politics, that can mean publicly denigrating his target or pressuring them to resign. In a heavily militarized standoff between nuclear powers, the stakes would be higher.“If Trump gets all valedictory over simple willingness to talk, he may also tack hard in the other direction when hopes are dashed,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security , wrote on Twitter.For North Korea, high-level talks are a big win in their own right. Kim seeks to transform his country from a rogue pariah into an established nuclear power, a peer to the United States, a player on the international stage.That wins Kim international acknowledgment and heightened status, as well as significant domestic credibility.“Kim is not inviting Trump so that he can surrender North Korea’s weapons,” Jeffrey Lewis, a Korea expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, wrote on Twitter. “Kim is inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to treat him as an equal.”That’s been a North Korean priority since the 1990s.Trump is granting Kim that victory, thereby surrendering one of the United States’ last remaining opportunities to extract something from North Korea, without getting anything demonstrable in return.North Korea is likely to enter talks with other goals, and the United States does wield other leverage, so it could yet come to something. But with this concession granted and the two parties not even sure of each other’s positions on other matters, that may be the end of it.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says China is glad he’s seeking a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis rather than “going with the ominous alternative.”

Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng) on Friday after announcing he was willing to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Trump tweets that he and Xi spoke about that agreed-to meeting and that Xi “appreciates that the U.S. is working to solve the problem diplomatically rather than going with the ominous alternative.”

Trump in the past has threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Trump also says China “continues to be helpful!” He’s repeatedly urged China to do more to pressure North Korea into abandoning its nuclear program.

Trump misspelled Xi’s first name as “Xinping.”</s>The White House tried to swat away criticism Friday that the U.S. is getting nothing in exchange for agreeing to a historic face-to-face summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said North Korea has made promises to denuclearize, stop its nuclear and missile testing and allow joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. But questions remained over exactly what North Korea means by "denuclearize" and what the U.S. might be risking with a highly publicized summit that will build up Kim's stature among world leaders.

"Let's not forget that the North Koreans did promise something," Sanders said, responding to a reporter's question about why Trump agreed to a meeting — unprecedented between leaders of the two nations — without preconditions.

She added: "We are not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea."

Still, the White House indicated that planning for the meeting was fully on track.

The previous night's announcement of the summit marked a dramatic turnaround after a year of escalating tensions and rude insults between the two leaders. A personal meeting would have been all but unthinkable when Trump was being dismissed as a "senile dotard" and the Korean "rocket man" was snapping off weapons tests in his quest for a nuclear arsenal that could threaten the U.S. mainland.

North Korea's capabilities are indeed close to posing a direct atomic threat to the U.S. And the wider world has grown fearful of a resumption of the Korean War that ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.

The prospect of the first U.S.-North Korea summit has allayed those fears somewhat. The European Union, Russia and China — whose leader spoke by phone with Trump on Friday — have all welcomed the move.

North Korea's government has yet to formally comment on its invitation to Trump. South Korea said the president agreed to meet Kim by May, but Sanders said Friday that no time and place had been set.

The "promises" on denuclearization and desisting from weapons tests were relayed to Trump by South Korean officials who had met with Kim Monday and brought his summit invitation to the White House. Trump discussed the offer with top aides on Thursday. Some expressed their reservations but ultimately supported the president's decision to accept it, according to U.S. officials who were briefed on the talks and requested anonymity to discuss them.

Still, some lawmakers and foreign policy experts voiced skepticism about the wisdom of agreeing to a summit without preparations by lower-level officials, particularly given the lack of trust between the two sides. North Korea is also holding three American citizens for what Washington views as political reasons.

"A presidential visit is really the highest coin in the realm in diplomacy circles," said Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, adding that Trump "seemed to spend it without getting anything in return, not even the release of the three U.S. captives."

Some say Trump could be setting himself up for failure amid doubts over whether Kim has any intention to relinquish a formidable atomic arsenal that he has made central to his personal stature and North Korea's standing in the world. Kim would also boost his own standing by becoming the first of the three hereditary leaders of North Korea to sit down with an American president.

Evans Revere, a former senior State Department official experienced in negotiating with North Korea, warned there is a disconnect between how the North and the U.S. describes "denuclearization" of the divided Korean Peninsula. For the U.S. it refers to North Korea giving up its nukes; for North Korea it also means removing the threat of American forces in South Korea and the nuclear deterrent with which the U.S. protects its allies in the region.

"The fundamental definition of denuclearization is quite different between Washington and Pyongyang," Revere said, noting that as recently as Jan. 1, Kim had vigorously reaffirmed the importance of nukes for North Korea's security. He said that misunderstandings at a summit could lead to "recrimination and anger" and even military action if Trump were embarrassed by failure.

"There is good reason to talk, but only if we are talking about something that is worth doing and that could be reasonably verified," said former Defense Secretary William Perry, who dealt with North Korea during President Bill Clinton's administration. "Otherwise we are setting ourselves up for a major diplomatic failure."

The White House maintains that Kim has been compelled to reach out for presidential-level talks because of Trump's policy of "maximum pressure."

"North Korea's desire to meet to discuss denuclearization — while suspending all ballistic missile and nuclear testing — is evidence that President Trump's strategy to isolate the Kim regime is working," Vice President Mike Pence, who has visited the region, said Friday in a written statement.

However, other presidents have lodged economic sanctions against North Korea, as Trump has. And the North has made a habit of reaching out after raising fears during previous crises, with offers of dialogue meant to win aid and concessions. Some speculate that the North is trying to peel Washington away from its ally Seoul, weaken crippling sanctions and buy time for nuclear development. It has also, from the U.S. point of view, repeatedly cheated on past nuclear deals.

Without question, the North wants a peace treaty to end the technically still-active Korean War and drive all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, removing what it says is a hostile encirclement of its territory by Washington and Seoul.

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Matthew Lee, Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin and Tracy Brown in Washington, and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul contributed to this report.</s>President Donald Trump said that the details of an anticipated meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are still being worked out with a 'time and place to be determined.'

In a message posted to his Twitter feed Friday night, Trump also wrote that if a deal to arrange a summit between the two adversaries can be reached, it would be a positive development for the world.

'The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the World. Time and place to be determined,' Trump wrote in the tweet.

On Thursday, the commander-in-chief accepted an invitation to meet face-to-face with the reclusive despot in a dramatic development that caught most policy experts off guard.

South Korea's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong first announced the face-to-face and claimed it was due to take place by May.

Chung says he relayed Kim's commitment to denuclearization.

'Kim pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests. He understands that the routine joint military exercises between the Republic of Korea and the United States must continue. And he expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,' the South Korean official said.

'President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization,' Chung said.

However, a statement from the White House did not confirm the two-month timeframe and said the place and time of the meeting was still being worked out.

Governments around the world welcomed the announcement, with praise coming from the UK, Russia and Australia.

'President Trump greatly appreciates the nice words of the South Korean delegation and President Moon. He will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement a half hour after South Korea's announcement.

'We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain.'

Chung, who made the announcement on behalf of South Korea, led the delegation visiting North Korea earlier this week. The invitation to meet Trump was made to him directly by Kim.

The foreign official said that Kim understands and accepts the fact that joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises will continue and that he also made promises to halt nuclear and ballistic tests until the meeting with Trump takes place.

The planned meeting drew immediate praise from other nations.

A spokesperson for the British government said, 'The UK welcomes the South Korean announcement that Kim Jong Un has made a renewed commitment to denuclearise and will refrain from further nuclear missile tests while dialogue continues.

'We welcome the announcement of direct talks with President Trump by May and (South Korean) President Moon Jae-in in April.

'We have always been clear that we want Kim Jong Un to change path and put the welfare of his people ahead of the illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons.

'We will continue to work closely with the US, South Korea and the international community to ensure that pressure on North Korea continues and sanctions are strictly enforced until Kim Jong Un matches his words with concrete actions. We will continue to monitor developments closely.'

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also welcomed the news, saying that Russia considers the move 'a step in the right direction.'

He went on to express hope that an agreement would be implemented because it is 'necessary for normalizing the situation around the Korean peninsula.'

Australia's former prime minister expressed surprise at how 'surprisingly good' Trump has been at foreign policy compared to his predecessors.

Bruce Klingner, former head of the CIA division for the Koreas, warned Trump to beware of Kim's siren song.

'Washington has fretted that Seoul's acquiescence to North Korea's Olympic charm offensive conveyed legitimacy to the regime and risked undermining international resolve to maintain pressure. The U.S. counseled its ally to exercise caution and move forward cautiously and only after lengthy preparations,' said Klingner, a research fellow now at the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation.

'The Trump administration should take its own advice before it is seduced by the same sirens' song,' he said in a statement.</s>President Donald Trump seemed to suggest Friday evening that he is still committed to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, asserting that a deal is in the works.

“The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the world,” the president tweeted, just only a few hours after a White House press briefing cast confusion over possible talks.

South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-Yong made a shocking announcement Thursday evening, revealing that not only does Kim want to meet Trump but the president has agreed to a meeting.

“President Trump appreciated the greeting and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization,” Chung told reporters.

The White House then issued a statement, announcing that Trump “will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined.”

The president followed that statement with a tweet revealing that there is a “meeting being planned.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders threw a bit of cold water on the narrative Friday afternoon.

She stressed that talks will only occur if North Korea takes “concrete and verifiable action” toward denuclearization.

Her rhetoric led some observers to conclude that the White House had cold feet about the proposed meeting with North Korea.

Trump’s latest tweet suggests that a meeting is still the planned course of action.

On Saturday he issued another tweet about the meetings.

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

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.</s>President Donald Trump seemed to suggest Friday evening that he is still committed to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, asserting that a deal is in the works.

“The deal with North Korea is very much in the making and will be, if completed, a very good one for the world,” the president tweeted, just only a few hours after a White House press briefing cast confusion over possible talks.

South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-Yong made a shocking announcement Thursday evening, revealing that not only does Kim want to meet Trump but the president has agreed to a meeting.

“President Trump appreciated the greeting and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization,” Chung told reporters.

The White House then issued a statement, announcing that Trump “will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined.”

The president followed that statement with a tweet revealing that there is a “meeting being planned.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders threw a bit of cold water on the narrative Friday afternoon.

She stressed that talks will only occur if North Korea takes “concrete and verifiable action” toward denuclearization.

Her rhetoric led some observers to conclude that the White House had cold feet about the proposed meeting with North Korea.

Trump’s latest tweet suggests that a meeting is still the planned course of action.

On Saturday he issued another tweet about the meetings.

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

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.</s>North Korea's neighbors welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's surprise decision to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss ending the North's threatening nuclear program.

Since the talks were announced late Thursday in Washington, U.S. lawmakers, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean officials have embraced the development. But there is also caution over possible outcomes from the high-stakes talks.

The White House confirmed reports by Chinese state media that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone on Friday, but did not offer details of that conversation.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, “Xi told Trump that he appreciates the U.S. president's desire to resolve the Korean Peninsula issue politically." The report adds Xi hopes the U.S. and North Korea will start talks “as soon as possible and strive for positive results,” and that “all parties concerned will show good will and avoid anything which might affect or interfere with the improving situation on the Peninsula.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been suspicious of North Korea’s motives, spoke with Trump on Thursday and praised Trump's hardline leadership for forcing Pyongyang to change. Abe said he plans to visit Trump in Washington next month to discuss the summit with North Korea.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham suggested the talks show stepped up U.S. sanctions are having an impact.

"After numerous discussions with President Trump, I firmly believe his strong stand against North Korea and its nuclear aggression gives us the best hope in decades to resolve this threat peacefully," he said.

Graham also said the United States is not going into the talks with high expectations.

"I am not naive. I understand that if the past is an indication of the future, North Korea will be all talk and no action."

It is not clear what Kim will want in exchange for abandoning a nuclear weapons program that has been a core focus since he became supreme leader in late 2011.

The talks are a high-stakes gamble. Success could mean significantly de-escalating tensions over North Korea’s accelerated nuclear and ballistic missile tests over the past two years, which have grown sophisticated enough to threaten the U.S. If the talks fail, it could worsen the situation.

Robert Gallucci, chief U.S. negotiator during the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis, said North Korea's invitation is a "surprising and welcome development. He added, "If representatives of both governments can meet, and a summit ultimately is held, it would represent substantial progress in reducing tension and the risk of war."

"What is new isn't the proposal, it's the response," said Daniel Russell, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific." He said North Korea "has for many years proposed that the president of the United States personally engage with North Korea's leaders as an equal - one nuclear power to another."

President Trump has been critical of past efforts by the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama to resolve the North Korean nuclear threat through negotiations. These past deals slowed the North’s nuclear progress, but Pyongyang covertly continued its development efforts and eventually reneged on pledges to dismantle its nuclear facilities.



 VOA Correspondent Brian Padden and reporter Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report</s>The announced talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have been broadly welcomed following years of tension over the North's nuclear weapons and missile programs. Less clear is how such a meeting could affect human rights in North Korea, which has one of the world's most oppressive governments.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Tomas Ojea Quintana on Friday used the occasion of the announced talks to appeal for North Korea to also open a dialogue with the United Nations on human rights.

"I had always stressed that engagement with North Korea should never be underestimated, and also that human rights remain a priority and must not be held hostage to the security situation. In this regard, I urge the DPRK to consolidate the rapprochement with a parallel opening to U.N. human rights monitoring," he said in a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea stated in 2014 that authorities there have committed crimes against humanity including murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, deliberate starvation, sexual violence and enforced disappearances.

Quintana also noted that family reunions — short meetings between family members who have been separated for decades by the border between North and South — have not been held since 2015 and should be resumed as soon as possible, given the age of many of those concerned.

The average age of the 59,000 people requesting a family reunion in the North is 81.

Quintana's reporting on the human rights situation in North Korea has been rejected by Pyongyang. The U.N. largely depends on interviews with North Korean defectors to learn about conditions in the country, but Quintana has been lobbying the North to engage with the U.N. on the issue.

Some critics say the meeting with a U.S. president, a first for North Korea, will bolster the reputation of a government whose rights abuses have made it an international pariah.

A presidential meeting is "a very legitimizing gesture for one of the world's most serious human rights abusers, somebody who's had relatives assassinated and executed to consolidate his regime," P.J. Crowley, U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs during the Obama administration, said Friday. "We've traded this meeting for perhaps a 90-day moratorium on nuclear and missile tests."

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence criticized the North Korean human rights record in February, en route to the Olympic Games on the Korean Peninsula.

"As we speak, an estimated 100,000 North Korean citizens labor in modern-day gulags. ... Those who dare raise their voices in dissent are imprisoned, tortured and even murdered; their children and grandchildren [are] routinely punished for their family's sins against the state," Pence said in remarks to U.S. troops at the Yokota Air Base in Japan.

U.S. President George W. Bush's top adviser on North Korean affairs, Victor Cha, wrote Friday in The New York Times that Pence's words must not be forgotten in the rush to put Trump and Kim together in a room.

"Any summit meeting cannot allow Mr. Pence's pronouncements during the Olympics about North Korea's human rights abuses to evaporate into thin air," Cha wrote. "Indeed, engaging the regime on improving its human rights record could be an important metric of the authenticity of the North's diplomatic overtures."

And rights group Human Rights Watch wrote an open letter to the United Nations on Thursday, demanding that U.N. officials and member states in the U.N. Human Rights Commission keep the pressure on North Korea to demand "real changes" that will improve the lives of North Koreans.</s>WASHINGTON >> The White House tried to swat away criticism Friday that the U.S. is getting nothing in exchange for agreeing to a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said North Korea has made promises to denuclearize, stop its nuclear and missile testing and allow joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

“Let’s not forget that the North Koreans did promise something,” Sanders said, responding to a reporter’s question about why Trump agreed to summit without preconditions.

She added: “We are not going to have this meeting take place until we see concrete actions that match the words and the rhetoric of North Korea.”

It was not clear whether the comments would add a wrinkle to plans, announced Thursday, for an unprecedented meeting between leaders of the antagonistic nations. North Korea’s government has yet to formally comment on its invitation that was relayed to Trump by South Korean officials who met with Kim in Pyongyang this week.

The South Koreans, briefing Trump at the White House on Thursday, relayed that the North Korean leader expressed a commitment to denuclearization, a top demand of Trump and U.S. allies. However, that would be a subject of negotiation, not a precondition for the meeting.

Kim also pledged to halt nuclear and missile testing, after conducting a string of such tests during Trump’s first year in office, the South Koreans said, and expressed an eagerness to meet Trump. They said the president agreed to meet Kim by May, and the White House later confirmed the president’s decision. However, Sanders said no time and place had been set. No sitting U.S. president has ever met with a North Korean leader.

The White House said Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” against North Korea — tough sanctions and diplomatic isolation — compelled the reclusive nation to reach out for presidential-level talks, validating the Trump administration’s hard-line strategy of economic penalties and bellicose barbs.

“North Korea’s desire to meet to discuss denuclearization — while suspending all ballistic missile and nuclear testing — is evidence that President Trump’s strategy to isolate the Kim regime is working,” Vice President Mike Pence, who has visited the region, said Friday in a written statement.

Pence said the North Koreans are coming to the table despite receiving “zero concessions” from the U.S.

White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said Trump had discussed his decision with a “handful” of lawmakers, but wouldn’t reveal names. Short said the administration was cautious about the meeting, but Congress was responding with “excitement and encouragement.”

A meeting between the leaders would have been an unthinkable suggestion just a few months ago, when the insults between them were at their peak. Trump was a “senile dotard,” and the North was snapping off regular weapons tests in its quest for a viable nuclear arsenal that can threaten the U.S. mainland.

Liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who some believe has maneuvered the two leaders to this position, declared Friday that the planned summit will be a “historical milestone” that will put the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula “really on track.”

North Korea has made a habit of reaching out, after raising fears during previous crises, with offers of dialogue meant to win aid and concessions. Some speculate that the North is trying to peel Washington away from its ally Seoul, weaken crippling sanctions and buy time for nuclear development. It has also, from the U.S. point of view, repeatedly cheated on past nuclear deals.

The North wants a peace treaty to end the technically still-active Korean War and drive all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, removing what it says is a hostile encirclement of its territory by Washington and Seoul.

Trump’s hastily reached decision to accept the meeting sent White House staff scrambling.

On Thursday, South Korean national security director Chung Eui-yong had briefed U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster and other agency representatives, according to White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Once McMaster heard what was on the table, the group went to the Oval Office to brief Trump.

After Trump decided he would meet with Kim, he stuck his head into the White House press briefing room to alert reporters to an upcoming “major statement” by South Korea.

Hours later, on the White House driveway at night, Chung told reporters that Kim had “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible” and that “President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”

“Great progress being made,” Trump tweeted after the announcement.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday in Djibouti that Trump decided for himself to meet with Kim, and that it resulted from a sharp change in the North Korean leader’s stance.

“What changed was his posture in a fairly dramatic way. It was a surprise to us that he was so forward-leaning,” Tillerson said of Kim. He said it would take “some weeks” before the timing for the meeting is worked out.

Trump took office vowing to stop North Korea from its pursuit of a working long-range nuclear-tipped missile. He’s oscillated between threats and insults directed at Kim and more conciliatory rhetoric.

The historic announcement comes during a period of unparalleled tumult in the Trump’s West Wing, with the president’s policy agenda stalled and morale sinking as staff departures proliferate and disrupt efforts to instill more discipline and order.

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung and Foster Klug in Seoul, and Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.</s>WASHINGTON — South Korea will make a "major announcement" about the future of its relationship with North Korea, President Trump said Thursday after speaking with the South Korean president.

Trump made the announcement to reporters in unexpected — and unprecedented — visit to the White House briefing room. He said South Korea's statement would come at 7 p.m. Eastern Time about "a big subject — North Korea."

He did not elaborate.

The surprise development follows several weeks of thawing relations between North and South Korea, prompted by the North's participation in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang under a unified banner.

South Korean President Moon Jae-In sent a high-level delegation to the north this week for the first high-level talks in a decade. He also sent diplomats to Washington Thursday to brief the United States.

Those talks were seen as a first step toward normalization of relations between the two countries, which have been divided since the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war.

It's unclear, however, what effect those talks would have on the most pressing question: North Korea's repeated ballistic missile tests intended to demonstrate that it can launch a nuclear-armed ballistic missile.

At a Tuesday press conference, Trump appeared to warm to the idea of talks with North Korea, which he had previously dismissed as "a waste of time."

"I think that they are sincere," he said of North Korea's desire for talks. "I hope they're sincere. We're going to soon find out."
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urges U.S. President Donald Trump to be cautious in North Korea talks. Turnbull also said that Australia must retain sanctions on North Korea.