'Trump open to engage with Kim': White House reacts to North Korea's warning over denuclearisation; reflects on past summits

Time of India

6 days ago

US President Donald Trump remains open to renewed denuclearisation talks with
, even as Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader
, warned that any attempt to pressure the country into giving up its nuclear weapons would be seen as 'nothing but a mockery' by the US side.
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A White House official in response to Yo Jong's remarks said, "President Trump in his first term held three historic summits with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un that stabilised the Korean Peninsula and achieved the first-ever leader-level agreement on denuclearisation."
"The President retains those objectives and remains open to engaging with Leader Kim to achieve a fully de-nuclearized North Korea," the spokesperson added in a statement to Fox News.
In a statement carried by North Korean state media, Yo Jong said that while personal relations between Trump and Kim remain 'not bad,' Pyongyang now considers any discussion of its expanding nuclear arsenal to be completely off the table, according to Fox News.
She noted that North Korea's nuclear arsenal has expanded significantly since the last meeting between the two leaders, and made clear that no future summit would take place if denuclearisation remains on the agenda.
"If the US fails to accept the changed reality and persists in the failed past, the DPRK- US meeting will remain as a 'hope' of the US side," Kim Yo Jong said, referring to her country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 'It would be advisable to seek another way of contact,' she added as quoted by Fox News.
Trump held three unprecedented meetings with Kim Jong Un during his first term- in Singapore in 2018, Hanoi in 2019, and at the Korean demilitarized zone later that year, where he became the first sitting US president to step into North Korea.
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At the 2018 Singapore summit, both leaders signed a joint statement committing to "work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula" and agreed to build new US–North Korea relations. However, progress stalled in later meetings.
North Korea did not abandon its nuclear weapons, and the US did not lift sanctions. Reports indicated Kim wanted to dismantle parts of his arsenal in exchange for full sanctions relief, a proposal Trump rejected.
By 2020, the talks had collapsed completely, and North Korea resumed weapons testing.
In a statement Monday marking the 72nd anniversary of the end of the Korean War, Trump reflected on his past meetings with Kim, saying, "I was proud to become the first sitting President to cross this demilitarised zone into North Korea."
He also reaffirmed the US alliance with South Korea, stating, "Although the evils of communism still persist in Asia, American and South Korean forces remain united in an ironclad alliance to this day."