As reported by Reuters, US President Trump is will be meeting with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in in an attempt to apply pressure ahead of the now-tentative US-North Korea summit.
Key quotes
“Moon’s White House visit was originally arranged as a meeting to fine-tune a joint strategy for dealing with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but has instead become more of a crisis session after Pyongyang last week threatened to pull out of the planned June 12 summit in Singapore.
Moon’s government led efforts to resume dialogue with North Korea and gave enthusiastic accounts of its encounters with Kim, spurring Trump to accept an offer of a first-ever meeting between U.S. and North Korean presidents.
But the White House was caught off-guard when, in a dramatic change of tone, North Korea last week condemned the latest U.S.-South Korean air combat drills, suspended North-South talks and threw into doubt the summit with Trump if Pyongyang was pushed toward “unilateral nuclear abandonment.”
Trump has insisted he remains committed to the summit, but Vice President Mike Pence warned on Monday that the president was still willing to walk away from the meeting, telling Fox News that North Korea should not attempt to seek concessions for promises it did not intend to keep.”
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