Thursday is a historic day in South Korea: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be “the first North Korean leader to be in the southern section of the border since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War,” according to The Associated Press.
Kim and his South Korean counterpart, President Moon Jae-in, are meeting just south of the North Korea-South Korea border on Thursday, a “historic summit” that may offer some clues as to what a potential Trump-Kim meeting in June would look like.
The biggest open question, AP reports, is “North Korea’s level of denuclearization commitment.”
It’s also not clear how the leaders will announce the results of the summit. The most difficult part, Im said, centers on North Korea’s level of denuclearization commitment.
Friday’s summit and Kim’s planned meeting with President Donald Trump in May or early June were arranged after Kim recently expressed a wiliness to put his nuclear program up for negotiation after a year of nuclear and missile tests.
Meanwhile, on the U.S. side, President Trump’s team appears to be in full ‘preparation mode’ for a Trump-Kim summit that could take place in a matter of weeks. Reuters reported on Thursday that the U.S. is attempting to gather as much information as possible about “behavior, motives, personality and leadership style.”
The profile will also include intelligence gathered in past debriefings of others who have interacted with Kim, including ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman, Kim’s former classmates at a Swiss boarding school and South Korean envoys, other U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
All of this is being used to update the U.S. government’s classified file on Kim’s behavior, motives, personality and leadership style to help Trump and his aides develop a strategy for dealing with Kim at the expected first-ever meeting of U.S. and North Korean leaders.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who met with Kim recently and is expected to be confirmed as Trump’s new secretary of state on Thursday, will be a key player for the president in the coming weeks.
