By Trevor Hunnicutt
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he will “get the conflict solved with North Korea.”
At an Oval Office event where he highlighted his efforts to resolve global conflicts, Trump was asked whether he had written a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as was reported this month.
Trump did not directly answer the question, but said: “I’ve had a good relationship with Kim Jong Un and get along with him, really great. So we’ll see what happens.
“Somebody’s saying there’s a potential conflict, I think we’ll work it out,” Trump said. “If there is, it wouldn’t involve us.”
Seoul-based NK News, a website that monitors North Korea, reported this month that North Korea’s delegation at the United Nations in New York had repeatedly refused to accept a letter from Trump to Kim.
Trump and Kim held three summits during Trump’s 2017-2021 first term and exchanged a number of letters that Trump called “beautiful,” before the unprecedented diplomatic effort broke down over U.S. demands that Kim give up his nuclear weapons.
In his second term Trump has acknowledged that North Korea is a “nuclear power.” The White House said on June 11 that Trump would welcome communications again with Kim, while not confirming that any letter was sent.
North Korea has shown no interest in returning to talks since the breakdown of Trump’s diplomacy in 2019.
It has, instead, significantly expanded its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and developed close ties with Russia through direct support for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, to which Pyongyang has provided both troops and weaponry.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Steve Holland, David Brunnstrom and Christian Martinez; Editing by Leslie Adler)
