WASHINGTON--U.S. President Donald Trump will hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February but will maintain economic sanctions on Pyongyang, the White House said on Friday after Trump met Pyongyang's top nuclear negotiator.
The announcement came amid a diplomatic flurry in Washington surrounding the visit of Kim Yong Chol, a hardline former spy chief, and marked a sign of movement in a denuclearization effort that has stalled since a landmark meeting between Trump and the North Korean leader in Singapore last year.
"President Donald J. Trump met with Kim Yong Chol for an hour and a half to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of February," White House spokesman Sarah Sanders said.
Sanders insisted that while Trump's talks with the North Korean were productive, the United States "is going to continue to keep pressure and sanctions on North Korea."
Trump declared after the Singapore summit in June that the nuclear threat posed by North Korea was over. But hours before Kim Yong Chol's arrival on Thursday, Trump unveiled a revamped U.S. missile defense strategy that singled out the country as an ongoing and "extraordinary threat."
The first summit produced a vague commitment by Kim to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but he has yet to take what Washington sees as concrete steps in that direction. Nevertheless, both Trump and Kim had expressed an interest in arranging a second meeting, which some U.S.-based analysts say would be premature due to the lack of obvious progress so far. Some critics say the first summit only boosted Kim's international stature without much to show for it.
Harry Kazianis, an analyst at the conservative Washington-based Center for the National Interest, called the agreement to hold another summit a positive development. But he said: "Both nations must now show at least some tangible benefits from their diplomatic efforts during a second summit, or risk their efforts being panned as nothing more than reality TV."
Communist-ruled Vietnam, which has good relations with both the United States and North Korea, has been widely touted as the most likely site of the next summit. There has also been speculation about other possible venues, including Bangkok, Hawaii, or a return to Singapore.
