President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are meeting for a two-day summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 and 28. The two leaders will discuss a potential deal aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program.
This is the second time Trump and Kim have met — they first met in Singapore last June but have made very little progress in negotiating an end to North Korea’s nuclear program since then.
Trump’s 2018 meeting with Kim represented a dramatic shift in US diplomatic strategy when he agreed to sit down face to face with the North Korean leader to kick off nuclear negotiations, instead of reserving such a high-profile meeting for the end of the negotiation process when a deal had already been struck.
The Vietnam summit will focus on discussing a tentative deal between the two countries. This could potentially include signing a peace declaration to symbolically end the Korean War, as well as a promise from Kim to shut down a key nuclear facility in return for some modest economic sanctions relief from the US.
Reaching an agreement on these terms could significantly bolster the two countries’ relationship — but most experts are not optimistic.
Questions remain about how the two-day summit will turn out: Will Trump and Kim continue to get along? Will they actually sign a peace declaration? Or will the summit merely be a repeat of Singapore — big on photo ops but short on substance?
While these questions remain unanswered, the two-day summit held in Hanoi on February 27 and 28 should shed light on the current and future US-North Korea agenda.