By Noah Bierman and Tracy Wilkinson / Tribune Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — U.S. and North Korean officials have engaged in secret back-channel talks and Pyongyang has committed to a summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un that will touch on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, a White House official said Sunday.
The White House said March 8 that Trump had accepted an invitation from Kim to meet, but the government in Pyongyang did not officially confirm the meeting until now. The date and the venue have still not been set.
No sitting U.S. president has ever met with a North Korean leader, and Trump’s offer to do so without preconditions stunned American allies in the region and U.S. foreign policy veterans.
The proposed summit grew out of an easing of tensions between North and South Korea this year. In March, several senior South Korean officials met with Kim in Pyongyang and then flew to Washington, where they told Trump that Kim had extended an invitation to meet as early as May.
It has been unclear whether North Korea would be willing to talk about giving up its nuclear weapons program, the U.S. goal in any negotiations. Kim’s government tested a powerful nuclear device in September and has tested intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States.
The White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing internal talks, said recent secret meetings between North Korean and U.S. officials secured Pyongyang’s commitment to proceed with a summit.
The official did not say where the meetings occurred, but U.S. officials have dealt with North Korea on the sidelines of the United Nations in New York, where North Korea has a diplomatic mission, and at other international settings. Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.
The summit site still is an open question. Kim is known to have traveled outside North Korea only once since taking office in 2011, visiting Beijing for two days recently to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
U.S. officials say Trump would not go to Pyongyang, the isolated nation’s capital. So speculation has focused on sites in China, in neutral Switzerland, or in the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea.
The potential detente comes after Trump and Kim exchanged crude insults last year — “little rocket man” vs. “deranged U.S. dotard” — and bellicose threats of nuclear war as Kim continued his nuclear and missile tests, including some that flew over Japan.
But North Korea’s economy has been hurt by U.S. and international sanctions, and South Korea’s government has sought to promote talks.
Trump will meet on April 17 in Florida with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government was caught off guard by Trump’s offer to negotiate directly with North Korea.
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