U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview on Jan. 23 he intends to again engage North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, signaling a shift from the previous Biden administration.
"I'll reach out to him again," Trump said in the interview with Fox News.
Kim, who Trump lauded as a "smart guy," has become Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key ally in a war against Ukraine, providing ballistic missiles and artillery and sending 12,000 troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
"He’s not a religious zealot. He happens to be a smart guy," the U.S. president said, adding that he had good relations with Kim during his first presidential term in 2017-2021.
The North Korean dictator has grown increasingly assertive in recent years, cementing an alliance with Russia and carrying out new missile tests. This prompted sharp deterioration of relations with the U.S. under the Biden administration and rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.
Initially dismissive of the North Korean leader during his first term in office, Trump later engaged Pyongyang in a rare diplomatic effort to halt the North Korean nuclear program and even claimed to have built a warm personal relationship with Kim.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently admitted that Trump’s diplomatic efforts did not achieve any "enduring" progress in stalling Pyongyang’s nuclear arms development.
Trump’s return to the White House is expected to bring geopolitical shifts as the president has often voiced sympathies for the U.S.’s rivals and authoritarian leaders, like Putin or Kim, while being critical of Washington’s allies.
The U.S. president said he plans to reach out to Putin and broker a peace deal in Ukraine, threatening with additional sanctions unless Moscow agrees to negotiate.
Kateryna Hodunova
(Updated: )
