President Donald Trump on Thursday said that his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will take place on June 12 in Singapore. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” Trump said on Twitter.
The announcement comes a day after Pyongyang, in a conciliatory gesture, released three American prisoners accused of espionage. “We want to thank Kim Jong-un,” the US president said after the prisoners reached Maryland. “We very much appreciate that he allowed them to go before the meeting. He was nice in letting them go before the meeting…That was a big thing, very important to me.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday visited Pyongyang to discuss the details for the proposed meeting between the two leaders.
Tensions between the US and North Korea escalated in 2017 after Pyongyang stepped up its efforts to boost its nuclear weapons programme. Trump had warned Kim Jong-un a number of times against it, and the two leaders had frequently traded ridicule, insults and threats. On April 27, at a historic peace summit between the two Koreas in Panmunjom village in the South, the North had announced its intention to denuclearise the Korean peninsula. The two sides also vowed to end the Korean War.
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