Trump, Hailing Korean Talks, Says He Won’t Be Hoodwinked by North

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday hailed the historic summit meeting between the leaders of North Korea and South Korea and declared that in his own planned talks with the North he would not be fooled the way he said his predecessors had been on dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

“I don’t think he’s playing,” Trump said of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, speaking with reporters in the Oval Office before a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

“The United States has been played beautifully, like a fiddle, because you had a different kind of a leader,” Trump went on. “We’re not going to be played, OK? We’re going to hopefully make a deal; if we don’t, that’s fine.”

Trump spoke after a groundbreaking meeting between Kim and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea in the Demilitarized Zone between the North and South. The two leaders agreed to work to remove all nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula and, within a year, pursue talks with the United States to declare an official end to the Korean War, which raged from 1950 to 1953.

“On the occasion of this week’s meeting between President Moon and Kim Jong Un, I want to express my hope that all of the people of Korea — North Korea and South — can someday live in harmony, prosperity and peace, and it looks like it could happen,” Trump said earlier Friday during a ceremony honoring U.S. athletes who competed in February at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

He claimed a measure of credit for bringing about the summit meeting, saying he had defied expectations with his approach to Kim, with whom he plans to meet within weeks.

“When I began, people were saying that was an impossibility,” Trump said. “They said there were two alternatives: Let them have what they have, or go to war. And now we have a much better alternative than anybody thought even possible.”

Trump said the list of potential sites for his meeting with Kim had been narrowed to two or three, a sign that the United States and North Korea are progressing in their arrangements for the high-stakes meeting.

“The relationships are building, and building strongly, and this will be a great thing for the world,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “We will, I think, come up with a solution — and if we don’t, we leave the room with great respect.”

Trump’s first public reaction to the inter-Korean talks came early Friday on Twitter, where he declared, “KOREAN WAR TO END!” Minutes earlier, he had sounded a more cautious note, writing that “good things are happening, but only time will tell!”