President Trump will not participate in a June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the White House announced Thursday, citing recent public remarks from the authoritarian nation’s leaders.
“I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote in an open letter to Kim. “Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the word, will not take place.”
The president and Kim were scheduled to hold historic talks in Singapore next month to discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile program. Trump accepted the invitation in March, after communication was conveyed by South Korean officials and before then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo traveled to North Korea to personally meet with Kim.
Despite explosive first-year exchanges between the two leaders, North Korea took public steps ahead of the summit to ease tensions with the U.S., including by releasing three detained Korean-Americans who had been held captive in Pyongyang on charges of espionage and unidentified “hostile acts.”
North Korean officials also said ahead of the June 12 meeting that the country would close its primary nuclear weapons test site in Punggye-ri. State-run media reported earlier Thursday that the regime had taken steps to demolish the site, though some national security experts suspected it had less to do with appeasing the U.S. and more with the site no longer being fully operational.
But much of the progress made ahead of the summit came to a halt late Wednesday, when Choe Son Hui, one of North Korea’s seven vice ministers of Foreign Affairs, warned of a nuclear showdown between the U.S. and Pyongyang. In comments to the country’s state-run news agency, Choe accused Vice President Mike Pence of making “unbridled and impudent” comments about denuclearization in North Korea.
The Vice President had told Fox News during an interview aired Monday that talks with North Korea would “only end like the Libya model ended if Kim Jong Un doesn’t make a deal.” Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi was murdered by rebel-backed forces in 2011, less than a decade after agreeing to turn over his nuclear program to the United States.
“Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States,” Choe said.
The statement came less than two weeks after officials in Pyongyang first threatened to withdraw from the summit because the U.S. resumed its joint military exercises with South Korean forces. The exercises had previously been placed on hold during the 2018 Winter Olympics, a move that helped bring together Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April for talks at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the first inter-Korean summit in over a decade.
The now-cancelled summit resulted in a marked shift earlier this spring in Trump’s public description of Kim. He dropped last year’s insulting nickname “Little Rocket Man” in favor of calling the isolated leader “respected,” and lauded him earlier this month for the “honorable” move of returning American hostages to their families.
Just hours before releasing his letter to Kim, Trump said in a pre-recorded interview with Fox News he would be open to pursuing a “rapid phase-out” approach with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Though the administration maintains that it will keep up its maximum pressure campaign on the Kim regime until “concrete [and] verifiable” steps are taken to ensure Kim is abandoning his weapons.
“If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write,” Trump wrote to Kim on Thursday. “The world and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth.”
The president described the canceled summit as “a truly sad moment in history.”
