Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump both called it a historic occasion. Photo / AP
Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump both called it a historic occasion. Photo / AP
United States President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un concluded an extraordinary nuclear summit today by signing a document in which Trump pledged "security guarantees" to the North and Kim reiterated his commitment to "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."
Scroll down to read the complete text
The leaders also offered lofty promises, with the American president pledged to handle a "very dangerous problem" and Kim forecasting "major change for the world."
Trump added during a news conference tonight that Kim has before him "an opportunity like no other" to bring his country back into the community of nations if he agrees to give up his nuclear program.
"In the meantime the sanctions will remain in effect."
Trump said he had planned to place another 300 sanctions on North Korea recently, but he held off because it would be "disrespectful" ahead of the meeting.
Trump said the US will remove the sanctions already in place when they're assured that the nuclear weapons "are no longer a factor."
He also says that it takes "a long time to pull off complete denuclearisation" but that he will push for North Korea to remove its nuclear weapons as fast as it can "mechanically and physically" be done.
Trump said Kim was destroying a major missile engine testing site.
Kim informed him of this development during the historic nuclear summit they held today.
Trump did not give a location for the testing site. He says the details about the site being destroyed were not included in the joint declaration the leaders signed after nearly five hours of talks because they agreed to it after the document was signed.
Trump said destruction of the site was a "big thing" and once the process of denuclearisation was started, "it's pretty much over".
Trump says discussions over the next steps to take with North Korea will be happening soon.
"We're getting together next week to go into the details."
It's unclear where those discussions will take place or which North Korean officials will be involved.
But he says the talks will include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.
Trump is defending his repeated praise of Kim during their meetings in spite of Kim's distressing record on human rights.
Trump told reporters that Kim "is very talented." He pointed to Kim's rise to power at a relatively young age.
Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un walk from their lunch at the Capella resort on Sentosa Island. Photo / AP
Trump has appeared largely unconcerned about the implications of feting an authoritarian leader suspected of ordering the public assassination of his half brother with a nerve agent, executing his uncle by firing squad and killing US college student Otto Warmbier.
But Trump says without Warmbier's death, his meeting with Kim may not have happened.
He says the Canadian leader must not have realised that Trump had televisions on Air Force One, allowing him to monitor Trudeau's news conference at the end of the G-7 summit.
The president also recounted his discussions during the G-7 summit and his decision to withdraw the US from the final document.
Trump says the photo taken of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others standing before him was taken as they were waiting for changes he'd requested.
Trump says it "didn't look friendly" but it was "very friendly."
The signed agreement was light on specifics, largely reiterating previous public statements and past commitments.
It did not include an agreement to take steps toward ending the technical state of warfare between the US and North Korea.
The pair promised in the document to "build a lasting and stable peace regime" on the Korean Peninsula and to repatriate remains of prisoners of war and those missing in action during the Korean War.
Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump both called it a historic occasion. Photo / AP
Language on North Korea's bombs was similar to what the leaders of North and South Korea came up with at their own summit in April.
At the time, the Koreans faced criticism for essentially kicking the issue of North Korea's nuclear arsenal down the road to Tuesday's Trump-Kim summit.
Trump and Kim even directly referenced the so-called Panmunjom Declaration, which contained a weak commitment to denuclearisation and no specifics on how to achieve it.
News photographers captured photos of the broad, two-page agreement, which was not immediately released by the White House.
The formal document signing followed a series of meetings at a luxury Singapore resort.
Meeting with staged ceremony on a Singapore island, Trump and Kim came together for a summit that seemed just unthinkable months ago, clasping hands in front of a row of alternating US and North Korean flags, holding a one-on-one meeting, additional talks with advisers and a working lunch.
Throughout the summit that could chart the course for historic peace or raise the spectre of a growing nuclear threat, both leaders expressed optimism.
Kim called the sit-down a "good prelude for peace" and Trump pledged that "working together we will get it taken care of."
At the signing ceremony, Trump said he expected to "meet many times" in the future with Kim.
Responding to questions, he said "absolutely" he would invite Kim to the White House.
For his part, Kim hailed the "historic meeting" and said they "decided to leave the past behind."
In a moment that would have never happened in North Korea, reporters began yelling questions to Trump and Kim, including whether they had discussed the case of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who suffered brain damage while in North Korean custody and died in June 2017, days after he was returned home to Ohio.
US President Donald Trump shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un his presidential vehicle. Photo / AP
In the run-up to the meeting, Trump had predicted the two men might strike a nuclear deal or forge a formal end to the Korean War in the course of a single meeting or over several days.
But in the hours before the summit, the White House unexpectedly announced Trump would depart Singapore earlier than expected — Tuesday evening — raising questions about whether his aspirations for an ambitious outcome had been scaled back.
The meeting was the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.
Aware that the eyes of the world were on a moment many people never expected to see, Kim said many of those watching would think it was a scene from a "science fiction movie."
After meeting privately and with aides, Trump and Kim moved into the luncheon at a long flower-bedecked table.
As they entered, Trump injected some levity to the day's extraordinary events, saying: "Getting a good picture everybody? So we look nice and handsome and thin? Perfect."
Then they dined on beef short rib confit along with sweet and sour crispy pork.
And as they emerged from the meal for a brief stroll together, Trump appeared to delight in showing his North Korean counterpart the interior of "The Beast," the famed US presidential limousine known for its high-tech fortifications.
Critics of the summit leapt at the leaders' handshake and the moonlight stroll Kim took Monday night along the glittering Singapore waterfront, saying it was further evidence that Trump was helping legitimise Kim on the world stage as an equal of the US president.
Kim has been accused of horrific rights abuses against his people.
"It's a huge win for Kim Jong Un, who now — if nothing else — has the prestige and propaganda coup of meeting one on one with the president, while armed with a nuclear deterrent," said Michael Kovrig, a northeast Asia specialist at the International Crisis Group in Washington.
Trump responded to such commentary on Twitter, saying: "The fact that I am having a meeting is a major loss for the U.S., say the haters & losers."
But he added "our hostages" are back home and testing, research and launches have stopped.
Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump signed the document in front of the world's media. Photo / AP
Giving voice to the anticipation felt around the world as the meeting opened, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday he "hardly slept" before the summit.
Moon and other officials watched the live broadcast of the summit before a South Korean Cabinet meeting in his presidential office.
The summit capped a dizzying few days of foreign policy activity for Trump, who shocked US allies over the weekend by using a meeting in Canada of the Group of Seven industrialised economies to alienate America's closest friends in the West.
Lashing out over trade practices, Trump lobbed insults at his G-7 host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trump left that summit early and, as he flew to Singapore, tweeted that he was yanking the US out of the group's traditional closing statement.
The optimistic summit was a remarkable change in dynamics from less than a year ago, when Trump was threatening "fire and fury" against Kim, who in turn scorned the American president as a "mentally deranged US dotard."
Beyond the impact on both leaders' political fortunes, the summit could shape the fate of countless people — the citizens of impoverished North Korea, the tens of millions living in the shadow of the North's nuclear threat, and millions more worldwide.
Alluding to the North's concerns that giving up its nuclear weapons could surrender its primary deterrent to forced regime change, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that the US was prepared to take action to provide North Korea with "sufficient certainty" that denuclearisation "is not something that ends badly for them."
He would not say whether that included the possibility of withdrawing US troops from the Korean Peninsula, but said the US was "prepared to take what will be security assurances that are different, unique, than America's been willing to provide previously."
The North has faced crippling diplomatic and economic sanctions as it has advanced development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Pompeo held firm to Trump's position that sanctions will remain in place until North Korea denuclearises — and said they would even increase if diplomatic discussions did not progress positively.
Experts believe the North is close to being able to target the entire US mainland with its nuclear-armed missiles, and while there's deep scepticism that Kim will quickly give up those hard-won nukes, there's also some hope that diplomacy can replace the animosity between the US and the North.
-AP
The full text
Reuters has released a copy of the text of the document, in full below
President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new US-DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
Convinced that the establishment of new US-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognising that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new US-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
Having acknowledged that the US-DPRK summit - the first in history - was an epochal event of great significance and overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously.
The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-on negotiations led by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the US-DPRK summit.
President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have committed to cooperate for the development of new US-DPRK relations and for the promotion of peace, prosperity, and security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.
