US President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka.-AFP
Osaka - Trump made the offer in a tweet about his trip to South Korea.
Published: Sat 29 Jun 2019, 10:00 PM
Updated: Sun 30 Jun 2019, 12:58 AM
US President Donald Trump on Saturday proposed a weekend meeting with Kim Jong-un at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, an encounter North Korea said would be meaningful if it goes ahead.
If Trump and Kim do meet, it will be for the third time in just over a year, and four months after their second summit broke down with no progress on US efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korea said it had not had an official proposal.
Trump made the offer in a tweet about his trip to South Korea, where he landed on Saturday after the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
"While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!" Trump tweeted, later telling reporters his offer was spontaneous: "I just thought of it this morning."
"If he's there, we'll see each other for two minutes, that's all we can, but that will be fine," he said, adding that he and Kim "get along very well".
About five hours after Trump's tweet, the state news agency KCNA quoted Choe Son Hui, North Korea's first vice-minister of foreign affairs, as saying: "We see it as a very interesting suggestion, but we have not received an official proposal."
"If the DPRK-US summit meetings take place on the division line, as is intended by President Trump, it would serve as another meaningful occasion in further deepening the personal relations between the two leaders and advancing the bilateral relations," Choe said in a statement.
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