President Donald Trump has accepted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s dramatic offer to meet, and he’ll do it by May, a South Korean official said Thursday evening.
South Korea’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong informed U.S. press of the expected in-person conversation and said the goal of the unprecedented meeting between the two countries’ leaders is permanent denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Chung did not say where the meeting would take place.
A half hour after the foreign official announced the meeting, steps from the West Wing, the White House confirmed Trump’s participation. But it did not second Chung’s claim that talks would be held within the next two months.
A statement from White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the place and time of the meeting was still being worked out.
‘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,’ Sanders said. ‘We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain.’A U.S. official said the meeting would take place in ‘a matter of a couple of months’ but did not commit the president to a face-to-face with Kim this spring.