South Korean and U.S. officials see little chance that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet before the end of the year.
Reuters reported on the 23rd, citing sources, that Trump has actively sought to open talks with North Korea but that Pyongyang has not responded to those overtures. The sources said the U.S. has received no reply from North Korea on holding a summit between Trump and Kim. North Korea has shown little interest in diplomacy aimed at curbing its nuclear program, Reuters said.
Trump has taken an active posture toward a meeting with Kim this year. In August, he said he was planning a summit with Kim before year-end and claimed that Kim had responded favorably. South Korea's National Intelligence Service, in a briefing to the National Assembly late last month, put the odds of a Trump-Kim meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China on Nov. 18-19 at 50%.
But with the response more lukewarm than expected, time has grown short. The sources also noted that little time remains before the APEC summit, seen as the most likely venue for a U.S.-North Korea summit. Trump himself appeared to step back in recent remarks to reporters, saying he gets along very well with Kim but does not really know who is asking for a meeting.
The Trump administration views a meeting with North Korea positively. A White House official said U.S. policy toward North Korea has not changed, that Trump remains open to talking with Kim without preconditions, that there is no meeting to announce at this point and that the two leaders will meet at an appropriate time.
Experts are skeptical. Ankit Panda, a senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S. think tank, put the probability of a U.S.-North Korea summit at the APEC meeting at less than 10%. He said that if Trump wants a summit with Kim, North Korea is likely waiting for a public signal that would come at a high price, and that Trump's recent decision to scale back South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises probably was not enough.
A summit could also come together abruptly without advance notice. Michelle Park Steel, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said at a special luncheon hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea in Seoul's Itaewon district on the 21st that she does not know when the two leaders will meet, but stressed that if a summit does take place, it is likely to be announced suddenly.