North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Singapore today for an unprecedented summit with Donald Trump, an attempt to address the last festering legacy of the Cold War, with the US president calling it a “one time shot” at peace.
Before setting off, Mr Trump described the summit as a “one-time shot” at peace and said the two were in “unknown territory in the truest sense”. The US president will arrive later on Sunday.
Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal — which has seen it subjected to several sets of UN Security Council sanctions and threatened with military action by the Trump administration will top the agenda. Washington hopes the summit will kick-start a process that eventually sees Mr Kim give up his nuclear weapons.
Bringing the Korean War to a formal end 65 years after hostilities ceased will also be on the table at the first-ever summit between a North Korean leader and a sitting president of its “imperialist enemy”.
The two leaders have had an extraordinary up-and-down relationship over the past 18 months, trading insults and threatening war before abruptly changing track and moving towards a face-to-face meeting.
Kim arrived in Singapore on board an Air China 747 that according to flight tracking website Flightradar24 took off from Pyongyang in the morning ostensibly bound for Beijing, then changed its flight number midair and headed south.
Despite the White House’s “maximum pressure” campaign, the North remained defiant and carried out its sixth nuclear test in September 2017. Soon after, Mr Kim declared that his country had achieved its mission of becoming a nuclear state, with missiles that could reach the US.
But in early 2018, North Korea began attempts to improve relations with South Korea by sending a team and delegates to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. In March, Mr Trump surprised the world by accepting an invitation from Mr Kim – delivered via Seoul – to meet in person. Since then, the path to the summit has been rocky and uncertain, with Mr Trump at one point calling it off completely. But after some diplomatic scrambling, the two leaders will now sit down together.
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