 The prospect for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula could hinge on who picks up the tab for Kim Jong Un’s hotel. When it comes to paying for lodging at North Korea’s preferred five-star luxury hotel, the United States is open to covering the costs, the two people said, but it’s mindful that Pyongyang may view a U.S. payment as insulting. “It is an ironic and telling deviation from North Korea’s insistence on being treated on an ‘equal footing,’ ” said Scott Snyder, a Korea expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. The State Department initially declined to comment on the issue, but spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Saturday ruled out the possibility that the United States would pay for North Korea’s accommodations and said Washington is “not asking others to do so.” 
 
 Earlier in the week, Singapore government officials were made aware that the United States was considering asking them to cover the hotel costs for North Korea, the two sources said. [Trump reinstates summit with Kim Jong Un for June 12 in Singapore] 
 
 During the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea set aside $2.6 million to cover travel accommodations for a North Korean cheering squad, an art troupe and other members of the visiting delegation. But first, Trump’s team would have to get around its own economic sanctions against North Korea — by obtaining a waiver from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
– At least as of Friday, the US-North Korea summit meeting is back on—but who's going to foot the bill? Especially that darned hotel bill. So the Washington Post is asking in an article about how two teams led by Washington and Pyongyang are hammering out details before the June 12 meeting. Two people familiar with negotiations say the US team is willing to pay for North Korea's favored lodging, at the five-star Fullerton Hotel near the Singapore River, where the presidential suite alone costs over $6,000 a night. But knowing that cash-strapped North Korea may be insulted by a US payment, Americans are asking Singapore to pay for it. Yet such payments are nothing new: North Korean athletes and cheerleaders had their travel costs covered to the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang (by the International Olympic Committee and South Korea, respectively) and when former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper dined in North Korea to take back two US prisoners in 2014, he was served an elaborate meal and asked to pay the bill. One issue now is that paying for North Korea's hotel bill would violate Treasury Department sanctions; the US could seek waivers, but a detailed exemption list might raise eyebrows. On the bright side, the Fullerton does accept cancellations 48 hours ahead of time and the WiFi is free for guests, the New York Post reports.