![\"Photo\/Illutration\"](\"https:\/\/p.potaufeu.asahi.com\/9260-p\/picture\/29080741\/9d18f35dfd1d304292334d4f9ef64f62.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019. (REUTERS)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n WASHINGTON\/SEOUL–U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year and was open to further trade talks with South Korea even as he lobbed new criticisms at the visiting Asian ally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019d like to meet him this year,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he welcomed South Korea\u2019s new president, Lee Jae Myung, to the White House for the first time. \u201cI look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite clinching a trade deal in July that spared South Korean exports harsher U.S. tariffs, the two sides continue to wrangle over nuclear energy, military spending, and details of a deal that included $350 billion in promised South Korean investments in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After meeting with Trump, Lee attended a business forum with senior U.S. officials and CEOs of South Korean and U.S. companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To coincide with the visit, South Korea\u2019s flag carrier, Korean Air, announced an order for 103 Boeing aircraft, the largest order in the airline\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KIM IGNORES TRUMP CALLS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n North Korea did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump\u2019s remarks. Its state media said later that U.S.-South Korea joint military drills proved Washington\u2019s intention to \u201coccupy\u201d the Korean peninsula and target countries in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Trump\u2019s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump\u2019s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a May visit from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lee talked golf and lavished praise on the Republican president\u2019s interior decorating and peacemaking, telling reporters earlier he had read the president\u2019s 1987 memoir, \u201cTrump: The Art of the Deal,\u201d to prepare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong Un, build a Trump World (real-estate complex) in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,\u201d Lee told Trump, speaking in Korean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lee\u2019s office said he and Trump discussed shipbuilding and the assassination attempts against both men. Lee also invited Trump to attend the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping in October, and suggested the American president try to meet with Kim during the trip, Lee\u2019s office added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDespite the massive sanctions imposed to deter North Korea, the result has been the continuous development of nuclear weapons and missiles,\u201d Lee said during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington after the summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said North Korea now has the capacity to build 10 to 20 nuclear warheads per year, and only needs to perfect a reentry vehicle to carry those warheads on its largest ballistic missiles that can reach the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DIFFICULT ISSUES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n South Korea\u2019s economy relies heavily on the U.S., with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a \u201cmoney machine\u201d that takes advantage of American military protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think we have a deal done\u201d on trade, Trump told reporters. \u201cThey had some problems with it, but we stuck to our guns.\u201d He did not elaborate, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump said while sitting with Lee he would raise \u201cintel\u201d he had received about South Korean investigations he said targeted churches and a military base. The White House did not respond to a request for more information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This month, Seoul police raided Sarang Jeil Church, headed by an evangelical preacher who led protests backing Lee\u2019s ousted predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July, prosecutors investigating Yoon\u2019s declaration of martial law served a search warrant on the Korean part of a military base jointly operated with the U.S. Officials have said U.S. troops and materials were not subject to the search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Korea\u2019s far-right movement, especially evangelical Christians and Yoon supporters, sees him as a victim of communist persecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump was expected to pressure Lee to commit to more defense spending, including toward upkeep of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked if he would reduce those numbers to give the U.S. more regional flexibility, Trump said: \u201cI don\u2019t want to say that now,\u201d but that maybe Seoul should give the U.S. ownership of the \u201cland where we have the big fort,\u201d an apparent reference to Camp Humphreys, a U.S. Army garrison in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before the meeting, Lee told reporters it would be difficult for Seoul to accept U.S. demands to adopt such \u201cflexibility\u201d – a reference to using U.S. forces for a wider range of operations, including China-related threats.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019. (REUTERS) WASHINGTON\/SEOUL–U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year and was open to further trade talks with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1496,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions\/1496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indopacera.com\/ro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}