Trump Becomes First Sitting U.S. President To Meet With Leader Of North Korea, Resolves Long-Standing Pyongyang Concern That Kim Dynasty Lacked Photograph Of Itself Standing Beside American President

The Filing

SINGAPORE. Standing beneath alternating American and North Korean flags at the Capella resort on Sentosa Island, President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday became the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a leader of the Kim dynasty, a diplomatic threshold three generations of American foreign policy had previously declined to cross without preconditions, in exchange for a one-page joint statement that referenced "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" without defining any term in that phrase.

The summit, which followed a Trump tweet weeks earlier cancelling it and a subsequent letter rescheduling it, produced four bullet points and a handshake widely described as historic. The first three bullets pledged "new relations," "lasting peace," and "complete denuclearization." The fourth committed to recovering POW remains, a process that had been ongoing for decades. North Korea agreed to none of the verification mechanisms the United States had spent twenty-five years insisting on.

"He's a very talented man," President Trump told reporters of Kim Jong Un, a leader credited by Human Rights Watch with running a network of political prison camps in which an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 North Koreans were held in conditions amounting to forced labor at the time of the summit. "I also learned that he loves his country very much." The President added that he and Kim had developed "a very special bond" and that he trusted Kim to follow through, citing as evidence the fact that Kim had said he would.

In exchange for the meeting, the United States agreed to suspend joint military exercises with South Korea, which the President at his post-summit press conference called "war games" and described as "very provocative" and "very expensive," language North Korean state media had used to describe the same exercises since 1953. Aides traveling with the President, and the government of South Korea, had not been informed in advance of the concession.

Sources within the administration described the summit as a clear win on the grounds that it had occurred. A senior official said the achievement of denuclearization would unfold over an unspecified period, citing the President's view that "we'll know in about six months" whether Kim was sincere. The Norwegian Nobel Institute received a record number of Peace Prize nominations on the President's behalf in the days that followed, several of which the President personally retweeted.

At press time, North Korea had resumed development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, the joint statement remained the only signed product of the summit, and Kim Jong Un had obtained the photograph his grandfather and father had spent seven decades unsuccessfully pursuing.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who collected an unprecedented historic-first photograph for personal use, fueled an ongoing Nobel Peace Prize campaign, and acquired a foreign policy talking point he would deploy at rallies for the remainder of the term.
§Kim Jong Un, who obtained on Tuesday what three Kim leaders had pursued for seven decades: a sitting American president as a co-equal photo subject, conferring international legitimacy on a hereditary dictatorship without ceding any nuclear capability in return.
§The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, whose state media looped the handshake footage on multi-day cycles to domestic audiences as proof that the Republic had compelled the United States to come to it.
§Xi Jinping and the People's Republic of China, whose strategic interest in loosened pressure on North Korea was advanced by the President's mid-summit announcement that he would suspend U.S. and South Korean joint exercises.
§The Capella Singapore resort, whose room rates, bookings, and global brand recognition rose substantially after hosting the summit on the President's personal recommendation.
§Vladimir Putin, who observed a fellow sanctioned strongman receive an unconditional American audience and adjusted his expectations of what a future meeting with the same President might be made to yield.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment