WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump said Friday that the time and place has been set for his landmark meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — but kept the world guessing for now about the when and where.

Trump also said that withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea was “not on the table” as he looks to get Kim to give up his nukes at what will be the first summit of between a U.S. and a North Korean leader.

The New York Times reported that Trump has asked the Pentagon to prepare plans for scaling back the U.S. military presence in the allied Asian nation. Some 28,500 U.S. forces are based there, a military presence that has been preserved since the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.

North Korea has long sought the removal of those troops as one of its condition for denuclearization. It remains unclear if Kim has relaxed that demand as he turns to diplomacy with adversaries after a year of escalating tensions.

Trump suggested Monday that he was looking for his historic meeting with the North Korean dictator to be held at the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. That’s where Kim met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last Friday — a summit that has paved the way for the U.S. president’s planned face-to-face with Kim.

Trump also said then that the Southeast Asian city state of Singapore was also in the running to play host.

“We now have a date and we have a location. We’ll be announcing it soon,” Trump told reporters Friday from the White House South Lawn before departing for Dallas.

He’s previously said the summit was planned for May or early June. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence postponed a planned trip to Brazil at the end of May to free up resources for the summit.

Trump on Friday also heavily hinted that the release of three Americans by North Korea was in the offing, but again was sparing on the details.

“We’re having very substantive talks with North Korea and a lot of things have already happened with respect to the hostages, and I think you’re going to see very good things. As I said yesterday, stay tuned,” Trump said, referring to an earlier tweet on the issue that has also weighed on U.S.-North Korean ties.

Although Trump has placed considerable faith in South Korean leader Moon’s efforts to patch up relations with North Korea, the U.S. president has long complained that South Korea does not do enough to financially support the American military commitment. Still, it would be a quixotic move as he enters into negotiations with Kim.

National security adviser John Bolton, who was due to meet his South Korean counterpart Chung Eui-yong in Washington on Friday, called the Times report “utter nonsense.”

“The president has not asked the Pentagon to provide options for reducing American forces stationed in South Korea,” Bolton said in a statement.

Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report.</s>U.S. President Donald Trump says the time and place for his landmark meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been set, although he declined to reveal the details.

"We now have a date and we have a location. We'll be announcing it soon," Trump told reporters on May 4 outside the White House before he departed for a trip to Dallas.

Trump earlier in the week hinted that the two leaders could meet at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas.

Preparations for the meeting have gained momentum since a summit on April 27 between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the DMZ.

The moves are helping to ease tensions on the peninsula and bring at least a temporary end to Pyongyang’s testing of nuclear weapons, which was conducted in defiance of United Nations resolutions.

And in another sign of the times, North Korea announced on May 4 that it had moved its clock ahead by 30 minutes to align itself with South Korea’s time zone.

North Korea introduced its own time zone in August 2015, when it turned back the clock by 30 minutes, calling it "Pyongyang time."

 

 Meanwhile, Trump also disputed a published report that he had asked the Pentagon to present a plan for the withdrawal or reduction of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, saying such a move was "not on the table."

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa</s>North Korea's state media said on Thursday that China's state councillor Wang Yi met with the North's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho in Pyongyang where they discussed bilateral ties and issues regarding the Korean Peninsula.

BEIJING: China is willing to continue playing a positive role to seek a political resolution for the Korean peninsula, the Chinese government's top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, told North Korea's foreign minister as diplomatic efforts gather pace.

China is North Korea's most important economic and diplomatic backer, despite Beijing's anger at Pyongyang's repeated nuclear and missile tests and support for strong United Nations sanctions against the North.

However, China has also welcomed moves by North Korea to improve ties with South Korea and the United States.

Wang is visiting Pyongyang following last week's historic meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North's Kim Jong Un, where both pledged to improve ties.

The North surprised the world several days before that summit by declaring it would dismantle its nuclear test site to "transparently guarantee" its dramatic commitment to stop all nuclear and missile tests.

In a statement late on Wednesday, China's Foreign Ministry cited Wang as offering North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho his congratulations for the successful meeting between the leaders of the North and South.

China fully supports North Korea's commitment to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula as well as its decision to concentrate its efforts on economic development, Wang said during his trip to Pyongyang.

"We hope the dialogue between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the United States will be conducted successfully and that substantial progress will be made," he said, referring to an upcoming meeting between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.

China also fully supports a resolution of North Korea's "reasonable and legitimate security concerns" and gives its full support for the improvement of inter-Korean relations, Wang said.

"China is willing to strengthen communication with North Korea and continue to play a positive role in seeking a political solution to the Korean peninsula issue," he said.

China had largely sat on the sidelines while the two Koreas improved ties, until Kim made a secretive trip to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in late March.

Beijing has been keen to show that it has an indispensable role to play in seeking a lasting solution, concerned that its interests may be ignored, especially as Pyongyang and Washington edge closer together.

The widely read Chinese state-run tabloid the Global Times said in an editorial on Thursday the theory China was being marginalised "is a shallow attempt to manipulate public opinion".

China prefers quieter diplomacy, it said, pointing to the secrecy surrounding Kim's meeting with Xi.

"But Seoul, for its own political purposes, created much hype about the inter-Korean summit. U.S. President Donald Trump has started claiming credit for the Kim-Trump summit before it even starts," it said.</s>SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of -- North Korea readjusted its time zone to match South Korea's on Saturday and described the change as an early step toward making the longtime rivals "become one" following a landmark summit.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promised to sync his country's time zone with the South's during his April 27 talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. A dispatch from the North's Korean Central News Agency says that promise was fulfilled Saturday by a decree of the nation's Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly.

The Koreas used the same time zone for decades before the North in 2015 created its own "Pyongyang Time" by setting its clocks 30 minutes behind South Korea and Japan. It said at the time that it did so to root out the legacy of Tokyo's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, when clocks in Korea were changed to be the same as in Japan.

"Pyongyang Time" was created as tensions between the authoritarian country and the U.S. grew over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program and international sanctions aimed at dismantling it. But in recent months relations between the Koreas have warmed dramatically, with Kim and Moon pledging at their summit to rid their peninsula of nuclear weapons.

The meeting produced many steps toward reconciliation, including an agreement to resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, though it lacked a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff. Those details await Kim and President Donald Trump, who are expected to meet in the coming weeks.

KCNA earlier said Kim proposed returning North Korea to the South's time zone because it was "a painful wrench to see two clocks indicating Pyongyang and Seoul times hanging on a wall of the summit venue."

The news agency said resynchronizing North and South Korean time was "the first practical step" since the summit "to speed up the process for the north and the south to become one and turn their different and separated things into the same and single ones."

According to South Korea, Kim has said he'd be willing to give up his nukes if the United States commits to a formal end to the war and pledges not to attack the North. But his exact demands for relinquishing weapons that his nation spent decades building remains unclear.</s>BEIJING (Reuters) - No areas will be off limits in talks next week when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visits Japan, but North Korea is not going to be a focus, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Friday.

China and Japan, Asia’s two largest economies, have been trying to reset ties after years of increasingly bitter dispute over a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea and the legacy of Japan’s invasion of China before and during World War Two.

Japan will host a summit with Li and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in in Tokyo on May 9 to discuss regional issues, where North Korea had been expected to be high on the agenda.

The meeting, which has been hosted in turn by each of the three nations since the first held in Japan in 2008, aims to strengthen dialogue and cooperation.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou said Li’s trip to Japan, the first by a Chinese premier in eight years, represented a “rare development opportunity”, though he admitted challenges remain.

“There will be no off-limits areas,” Kong told reporters, referring to the talks between Li and Abe.

“As long as there are subjects both are interested in, they can be put on the table for candid discussion. (We) hope to increase understanding through discussion, which is helpful to narrowing differences on certain problems.”

While North Korea and other regional issues would come up and would be discussed with both Japan and South Korea so that the three sides could better coordinate policy, the isolated country was not a focus.

“I personally think this China-Japan-South Korea meeting is not to mostly discuss the situation on the Korean peninsula. It’s mainly to discuss regional cooperation between the three,” said Kong, who is also China’s special envoy for the North Korean nuclear issue.

“So I think it will be hard for the three of them to have sufficient time to have deep talks on this issue.”

Bracketing the summit, Li will make a state visit to Japan from May 8 to 11, when he will meet Emperor Akihito, Japan has said.

At Moon’s summit last month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, both sides agreed to work towards denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Kim is also due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in coming weeks.

Li will travel to Indonesia before going to Japan.

Indonesia is seeking ways to speed up a $5-billion high-speed rail project being built by a consortium of local and Chinese state firms which faces obstacles over land ownership issues.</s>President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prepare for reducing the number of US troops in South Korea unless South Korea shoulders more of the cost, reported the New York Times on Thursday, citing several people has briefed on the deliberations. The reduced US troop levels are not intended to be a bargaining chip in Trump’s planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in late May or early June, about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, the Times said. The officials, however, said that a peace treaty between North and South Korea could diminish the need for the 23,500 US soldiers currently stationed at the peninsula but the full withdrawal of US troops was unlikely, reported the paper.

But a US National Security Council official told a visiting South Korean official in Washington that the report was false, via telephone, the South Korean presidential office said in a statement. The White House, however, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said its posture has not changed. Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, before taking office as US secretary of state, met Kim Jong Un last month and reported the North Korean leader has not demanded the withdrawal of all US forces as a precondition for the summit with Trump. However, South Korea said on Wednesday, the issue of US troops stationed in the country was unrelated to any future peace treaty with North Korea and that American forces should stay even if such an agreement is signed.</s>President Donald Trump has requested options for reducing the number of US troops in South Korea, the New York Times reported Thursday, citing several people briefed on the matter.

The President’s request of the Defense Department comes ahead of his highly anticipated sit-down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, expected to take place along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas.

North and South Korea recently held their own historic summit, which included an agreement on holding talks over denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and bringing a formal conclusion to the Korean War.

If the peace talks continue among countries, it could decrease the need for a US presence in the region, officials told the newspaper.

When asked about the administration’s current position on removing US troops from the Korean Peninsula, a source close to the White House told CNN that it is viewed as something that could possibly happen in the future but “not until long after the nukes are verifiably gone.”

“That is the position,” the source said.

The source, who is familiar with the administration’s internal discussions, added removing US troops is not something currently being considered as a bargaining chip but as a possibility should there be no need for them down the line.

However, a statement released by the office of the South Korean president Friday refuted suggestions the US was considering a reduction in troop numbers. According to the statement, an official at the US National Security Council told South Korean National Security Chief Chung Eui-yong the New York Times report was “not true at all.”

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said the department has “no information about any troop options being prepared for the President” on this issue.

According to the New York Times report, the officials would not say if Trump was seeking options on a partial withdrawal or a full withdrawal, but said the latter was unlikely.

During a South Korean presidential briefing Wednesday, officials linked the presence of US forces in South Korea to wider issues of peace and regional security.

“A peace treaty cannot be achieved between South Korea-North Korea or North Korea-United States. A peace treaty signifies an agreement to establish legal and systematic policies for the whole Korean peninsula,” the official said, referencing the pledge made by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim to bring a formal end to the Korean War, 65 years after hostilities ceased.

“The status of the US forces was brought up from that relevance and I can reiterate South Korean government’s stance: we believe the US forces are needed to take a role of a mediator in the region of tensions and military conflicts in other nations such as Japan and China,” they added.

The US has around 28,000 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the Cold War and the conflict on the Peninsula.

According to US Forces Korea, its mission is to “deter aggression and if necessary, defend the Republic of Korea to maintain stability in Northeast Asia.”

During the presidential campaign and since, Trump had complained about the cost to the US of maintaining such a large force in Asia. Along with the Korean deployment, there are about 49,000 US troops in Japan.

In 2016, Army Gen. Vincent Brooks told the Senate Armed Services Committee the Korean government provided $808 million to support US troops in the region, and has paid 92% of a $10.8 billion base relocation project. It was actually cheaper to keep the troops in Korea than the US, Brooks said.

North Korea has long called for a reduction in US forces on the Peninsula, though it recently dropped their withdrawal as a precondition of denuclearization, according to South Korea.

Joint military exercises between South Korea and the US, which defenders argue are vital to maintaining operational effectiveness, regularly increase tensions on the Peninsula and are seen by North Korea as acts of hostility. Such exercises have featured drills including mock “decapitation strikes” against the North Korean leadership.

Within South Korea too there are critics of the US military presence. Last year, there were large protests against the deployment of the US THAAD missile defense system.

South Korean critics say THAAD, which would not prevent short range missiles striking the country, does not offer a strategic defense against North Korea, and is more about wider US tactical goals in the region.

In particular, they say the system’s advanced radar, which can see into China, is designed at reducing the effectiveness of that country’s military capabilities — a view Beijing shares.

After the system was first deployed, China reacted with an informal trade embargo, a chill which affected South Korean businesses and entertainers, and led to a diplomatic chill.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday said the date and location have been set for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which would be announced soon, and hinted at progress in winning the release of three Americans held in North Korea.

The White House has said the first meeting between sitting U.S. and North Korean leaders could take place in the coming weeks. Trump is expected to push for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

“We’re having very substantive talks with North Korea and a lot of things have already happened with respect to the (U.S.) hostages. I think you’re going to see very good things,” Trump told reporters.

The U.S. government is looking into reports that three Americans arrested in recent years in North Korea had recently been relocated from a labor camp to a hotel near Pyongyang, as expectations grow that they will be released before the summit.

Trump said this week that the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between North and South Korea would be an excellent venue for the planned summit, but that Singapore was also a possible site.

The Peace House at the DMZ was the venue for a meeting last month between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Trump also told reporters on Friday that he was not considering reducing the U.S. military’s presence in South Korea as part of the negotiations.

“Troops are not on the table,” he said before a flight to Dallas, Texas, where he will address the National Rifle Association.</s>JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (AP) — President Trump says US troops withdrawal in South Korea ‘not on the table’ in summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.</s>SEOUL, May 3 (Reuters) - Absent from last week's summit between the leaders of North and South Korea was Pyongyang's human rights record, and the issue appears to have faded from U.S. President Donald Trump's public agenda as he prepares for his own meeting with Kim Jong Un.

Rights activists and North Korean defectors fear that when Trump sits down with Kim, possibly as soon as this month, he may avoid the thorny issue of rights altogether if that helps seal a deal on getting North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons.

Just a few months ago, rights abuses were a focal point of Trump's criticism of North Korea, along with its pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles. Trump called Kim "obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people".

More recently, Trump called Kim "very honourable" and "open".

"President Trump should raise human rights concerns with Kim Jong Un, but I would be very surprised if he does," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of advocacy group Human Rights Watch's Asia division.

"He will not let human rights stand in the way of a deal, that´s for sure."

Former U.S. officials and diplomats have criticised Trump for often playing down rights in his foreign policy, except when it comes to abuses by certain U.S. adversaries like Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea - at least until recently.

The White House did not respond immediately to a question on whether Trump would raise human rights broadly with Kim at their summit. But it referred to Trump´s recent assurance to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that he would bring up the issue of North Korea´s abduction of Japanese citizens.

The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday it remained "gravely concerned and deeply troubled" by rights abuses and "will continue to press for accountability for those responsible".

Last month, the State Department labelled China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as "morally reprehensible" governments it said violated human rights within their borders on a daily basis, making them "forces of instability".

During his visit to Pyongyang last month, then-CIA director Mike Pompeo also spoke to Kim about the fate of three American citizens held in North Korea, and in a tweet on Thursday, Trump said to "stay tuned" for news of the men.

The North Korean mission at the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment, but state media has released a steady flow of commentaries in recent weeks, warning that taking issue with rights could undermine the recent detente.

U.N. investigators have reported the use of political prison camps, starvation and executions in North Korea, saying security chiefs and possibly even Kim himself should face international justice.

Between 80,000 and 120,000 people are held in four known North Korean political prison camps, the U.N.'s top North Korea rights official reported last year.

Kim himself is suspected of ordering the assassination of his half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, in Malaysia in February, as well as the execution of his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013.

But South Korean officials not only did not make rights a major feature of last week's summit, they also agreed to stop propaganda broadcasts and leaflet distributions on their border, disappointing some defectors pressing for better rights in the reclusive country.

For decades, with only a few breaks, the two sides have pumped out propaganda at each other, with the South broadcasting a mixture of news, Korean pop songs and criticism.

"I am counting on President Trump," said Kim Seong-min, a defector who runs Free North Korea Radio, which broadcasts from Seoul into the North.

"Without improving people's lives in the North, what's the point of having those summits? Those statements do not mean anything if they do not help North Koreans."

Officials close to South Korean President Moon Jae-in - himself a former rights lawyer - say that rashly pushing rights can be counterproductive.

Weeks before the inter-Korean summit, North Korean media warned South Korean officials to "behave with discretion", saying that criticising the North's rights record was tantamount to "throwing a stone to the thin ice-like North-South relations".

South Korean officials said the two Korean leaders discussed some general rights issues when they met, including an agreement to facilitate visits for families divided by the 1950-53 Korean war, and Moon brought up the issue of Japanese abductees.

While limited in scope, talking is better than previous periods of no communication at all, and the two Koreas did discuss allowing visits by families divided by the 1950-1953 Korean War, a spokesman for South Korea's presidential Blue House said.

Past efforts to improve North Korea's rights have often focused too much on political and social rights, while neglecting basic needs, said Moon Chung-in, special adviser to the South Korean president for foreign affairs and national security.

Moon referred to hard-line approaches by previous South Korean governments, which often led North Korea to restrict or reject humanitarian aid efforts.

"Who will be suffering as a result of that approach? North Korean citizens."

But Ji Seong-ho, a North Korean defector who was invited to Trump's State of the Union speech in January to highlight rights abuses, said he hoped international leaders would press Kim.

"People cannot speak out, they will probably face death if they state their views. People outside North Korea should tell the world about their human rights and lead to changes." (Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang in SEOUL, David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in WASHINGTON, and Michelle Nichols in NEW YORK Editing by Soyoung Kim, Robert Birsel)
At 23:30 local time, North Korea changes its time zone to match South Korea (UTC+09:00) – a "first practical" impetus for Korean reunification, says the official North Korean agency KCNA.