President Trump announced Friday the upcoming summit with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the end of the month. Mr. Trump confirmed he was meeting with Kim on Feb. 27 and 28 during his State of the Union address this week.
“My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Trump said during his State of the Union address this week he believed war would have broken out between the U.S. and North Korea had he not been elected.
“We continue our historic push for peace on the Korean peninsula,” Mr. Trump said.
The high-profile meeting will be the second one between the president and North Korea’s authoritarian ruler. The two leaders met during a landmark summit in Singapore in June 2018 and agreed to flesh out details of an agreement to start the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula — a long-sought and elusive foreign policy goal of American administrations since the 1950s.
A White House official with knowledge of the second summit’s planning told CBS News Vietnam was chosen as the location in part because of its good relationships with both the U.S. and North Korea. The official also pointed to the trajectory of relations between America and Vietnam — which were foes during the Vietnam War but have built a good relationship in recent years — as a hopeful model for potential warmer relations between U.S. and North Korea.
The summit was first announced in January after Mr. Trump met with top North Korean official Kim Yong Chol in the Oval Office.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report
