{"id":163337,"date":"2018-05-10T22:45:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T02:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=163337"},"modified":"2018-05-10T22:45:31","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T02:45:31","slug":"summit-set-detainees-free-trump-sees-nkorea-big-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/05\/10\/summit-set-detainees-free-trump-sees-nkorea-big-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit set, detainees free; Trump sees NKorea ‘big success’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for highly anticipated summit talks in Singapore on June 12. (Photo<\/a>: Donald J. Trump\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Envisioning \u201ca very special moment for world peace,\u201d President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0announced Thursday he will meet North Korea’s\u00a0Kim\u00a0Jong Un for highly anticipated summit talks in Singapore on June 12. He set the stage for his announcement by hosting a 3 a.m., made-for-TV welcome home for three Americans held by\u00a0Kim’s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe welcomed them back home the proper way,\u201d\u00a0Trump\u00a0told supporters at a campaign rally in Indiana Thursday evening.<\/p>\n

Final details in place,\u00a0Trump\u00a0and\u00a0Kim\u00a0agreed to the first face-to-face North Korea-U.S. summit since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. It’s the most consequential and perhaps riskiest foreign policy effort so far in\u00a0Trump’s presidency as North Korea’s nuclear program approaches a treacherous milestone \u2014 the capacity to strike the continental U.S. with a thermonuclear warhead.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0says the U.S. is aiming for \u201cdenuclearization\u201d of the entire Korean peninsula, but he has yet to fill in just what steps that might include and what the timing would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re starting off on a new footing,\u201d\u00a0Trump\u00a0said of himself and\u00a0Kim\u00a0as he welcomed the detainees in a floodlit ceremony at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. He hailed their release as a potential breakthrough in relations between the longtime adversary nations.<\/p>\n

He and\u00a0Kim\u00a0\u201dwill both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!\u201d he said of the summit later on Twitter. He told his rally crowd, \u201cI think it’s going to be a very big success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim\u00a0has suspended nuclear and missile tests and put his nuclear program up for negotiation, but questions remain about how serious his offer is and what disarmament steps he would be willing to take. The White House has said withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from South Korea is \u201cnot on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long before dawn Thursday, with the former detainees by his side on the air base tarmac,\u00a0Trump\u00a0said it was a \u201cgreat honour\u201d to welcome them back to the U.S. but \u201cthe true honour is going to be if we have a victory in getting rid of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ceremony, which also featured a giant American flag suspended between the ladders of two firetrucks, emphasized\u00a0Trump’s penchant for the dramatic as he raised expectations for the summit. And it underscored how closely the fate of his foreign policy agenda is being tied to the North Korean negotiations.<\/p>\n

He had wanted to hold the summit in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas but yielded to the concerns of officials who thought a DMZ meeting would focus attention on relations between the North and South rather than the nuclear question.<\/p>\n

Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, other top officials and first lady Melania joined the president for the air base celebration. The former detainees \u2014\u00a0Kim\u00a0Dong Chul,\u00a0Kim\u00a0Hak Song and Tony\u00a0Kim\u00a0\u2014 had been released Wednesday at the end of Pompeo’s visit to North Korea.<\/p>\n

They appeared tired but in excellent spirits, flashing peace signs and waving their arms as they emerged from the aircraft. One said through a translator, \u201cIt’s like a dream; we are very, very happy.\u201d They later gave the president a round of applause.<\/p>\n

Pence said Pompeo had told him that at a refuelling stop in Anchorage, \u201cone of the detainees asked to go outside the plane because he hadn’t seen daylight in a very long time.\u201d The men were taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for evaluation before being reunited with their families.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0thanked North Korean leader\u00a0Kim\u00a0for releasing the Americans and said, \u201cI really think he wants to do something\u201d on denuclearization.<\/p>\n

Pence said on NBC News, \u201cIn this moment the regime in North Korea has been dealing, as far as we can see, in good faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who was among several Republican lawmakers who dined with\u00a0Trump\u00a0and National Security Adviser John Bolton Wednesday evening before the detainees returned, said their release was a positive development, but he remained cautious about North Korea’s intentions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in uncharted waters,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the highest level diplomacy that the United States has to offer. Failure would be a significant setback to diplomatic efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the venue, why Singapore?<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Raj Shah said the country has relationships with both the U.S. and North Korea, meaning both presidents’ security \u2014 and a sense of neutrality \u2014 can be assured.<\/p>\n

Located at the southern tip of Malaysia, the prosperous city state is a regional Southeast Asia hub whose free enterprise philosophy welcomes trading partners from everywhere. It has close diplomatic and military ties with the U.S. and yet is also familiar ground for North Korea, with which it established diplomatic relations in 1975.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince their independence, they’ve very deliberately developed a reputation as an honest broker between East and West,\u201d said David Adelman, the former U.S. ambassador.<\/p>\n

The White House choreographed the arrival event at the air base, the image-conscious president telling reporters, \u201cI think you probably broke the all-time-in-history television rating for 3 o’clock in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public display stood in stark contrast to the low-key, private reception that the State Department had envisioned, in keeping with a practice of trying to protect potentially traumatized victims from being thrust into the spotlight so soon after an ordeal.<\/p>\n

Shortly after they touched down in Alaska, the department released a statement from the freed men. They expressed their appreciation to\u00a0Trump, Pompeo and the people of the United States and added: \u201cWe thank God, and all our families and friends who prayed for us and for our return. God Bless America, the greatest nation in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

North Korea had accused the three of anti-state activities. But their arrests were widely seen as politically motivated and had compounded the dire state of relations over the isolated nation’s nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

The three are:<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Kim\u00a0Dong Chul, 64, a South Korea-born U.S. citizen and the longest-serving detainee. He received a 10-year prison term with hard labour in April 2016 for allegedly \u201cperpetrating state subversive plots and espionage against\u201d North Korea. Before his sentencing, the former Virginia resident publicly apologized for slandering North Korea’s leadership, collecting and passing confidential information to South Korea and joining a smear campaign on the North’s human rights situation. Other foreigners have publicly admitted crimes but have said later their confessions were given involuntarily.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tony\u00a0Kim, who also goes by the Korean name\u00a0Kim\u00a0Sang-duk, had a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Riverside, and taught accounting at a private university in Pyongyang. He was detained at the Pyongyang airport for \u201ccriminal acts of hostility aimed to overturn\u201d North Korea, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency, which didn’t detail those acts.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Kim\u00a0Hak Song, who worked in agricultural development at an experimental farm run by the same school, the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. He was accused of engaging in unspecified \u201chostile acts\u201d against North Korea.<\/p>\n

The last American to be released before this, college student Otto Warmbier, died in June 2017, days after he was repatriated to the U.S. with severe brain damage. Warmbier was arrested in January 2016, accused of stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are happy for the hostages and their families,\u201d the Warmbiers said in a statement Wednesday. \u201cWe miss Otto.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Envisioning \u201ca very special moment for world peace,\u201d President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0announced Thursday he will meet North Korea’s\u00a0Kim\u00a0Jong Un for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":144993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16,17],"tags":[5923,1509,14087,50783,406],"class_list":["post-163337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","category-news-w","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-north-korea","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-summit-talks","tag-united-states","mauthors-zeke-miller","mauthors-jill-colvin","mauthors-matthew-lee","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}