Trump Positive on Renewed Talks With Kim Jong Un, South Korean Prime Minister Says

President Donald Trump remains positive about resuming dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said after visiting the White House.

Kim Min-seok made the remarks during a March 13 press briefing following a roughly 20-minute conversation with Trump earlier that day.

“A significant portion of the conversation involved inquiries about my views on North Korea-related issues,” he told reporters.

The meeting was not on the South Korean prime minister’s schedule, he said. Instead, he said it was organized spontaneously during a meeting with Paula White-Cain, senior adviser of the White House Faith Office, who took the initiative to arrange a private, interpreter-free session with the president in the Oval Office.

Kim Min-seok said the conversation began with general remarks about the South Korea–U.S. alliance and peace on the Korean Peninsula before turning quickly to North Korea. He said he relayed that South Korean President Lee Jae-myung sees Trump as “the only Western leader” capable of making progress on peace on the peninsula.

According to Kim Min-seok, Trump at one point asked staff to bring in a photograph of his June 2019 meeting with the North Korean leader at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. That encounter made Trump the first sitting U.S. president to step into North Korean territory.

“[President Trump] said that he has maintained good relations with Chairman Kim Jong Un,” Kim Min-seok said, noting that Trump asked for his view on diplomacy with North Korea.

Kim Min-seok said he shared some of his own ideas, although he declined to elaborate, citing diplomatic protocol.

He did say he told Trump that North Korean rhetoric appeared to have shifted somewhat—from language suggesting that there was “no reason not to meet” to remarks implying that Pyongyang–Washington relations did not necessarily have to remain hostile.

“I told [Trump] that it would be better to increase contacts and dialogue [with North Korea] to revive even a small possibility,” Kim Min-seok said.

The exchange underscores Trump’s continued interest in diplomacy with Pyongyang amid speculation that he could set up another meeting with Kim Jong Un during his upcoming trip to China for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Trump and the North Korean leader met three times during the U.S. president’s first term, including summits in Singapore in June 2018 and Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019, followed by their June 2019 meeting at the demilitarized zone.

Seoul has stated that it would welcome renewed talks between Washington and Pyongyang while maintaining that its long-standing goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula remains unchanged.

But tensions remain high: North Korea fired more than 10 ballistic missiles on March 14 during ongoing U.S.–South Korea military drills, according to South Korean authorities.

While in Washington, Kim Min-seok also met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Kim noted that their discussions centered on the Section 301 investigation into 16 economies—including South Korea, China, India, and the European Union. The probe is aimed at determining if they engaged in “structural excess capacity and production” within manufacturing sectors that harm U.S. businesses.