US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would meet Kim Jong Un later this year, seeking to revive the bond he claims to have forged with the leader of nuclear-armed North Korea in his first term.
Trump told reporters at the White House it was important to "get along" with Kim, adding in an unusually precise assessment that Pyongyang now had 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons, said AFP.
But Trump's sudden focus on Kim and his scaling back of joint US-South Korean military drills have alarmed Asian allies -- while sparking speculation that he is seeking a foreign policy win as his Iran war stalls.
"Yeah, I will be," Trump said during a tour of a new helipad at the White House, when asked if he planned to meet Kim later in 2026.
Trump defended planning to meet the North Korean leader even as he wages a war with Iran that he has justified on the grounds of preventing Tehran from getting a nuclear bomb.
"He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons. Should have never allowed it to happen... If I were president, I wouldn't have allowed it," Trump said, referring to Kim.
"But he's got them. I get along with him very well. I can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he's going to be fine."
Trump gave no details, but the Wall Street Journal reported that he was eying a meeting when he travels to Shenzhen, China for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November.
Hours later, South Korea's defense minister said Thursday that North Korea is estimated to have around 80 to 120 nuclear weapons.
"We usually estimate it to be around 80 to 120," Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers, declining to give a specific figure.
He said Seoul remained opposed to officially recognizing the North as a nuclear weapons state.
Asked whether Washington had "given up" on North Korea's denuclearization, Ahn said he did not believe so.
President Lee Jae Myung - who has long pushed for stronger homegrown defenses to reduce South Korea's reliance on the US -- said late Wednesday he would "do his utmost" to support and contribute to Trump's peacemaking efforts with the North.
- 'Very insulting' -
While acknowledging Pyongyang possesses nuclear weapons, the US does not officially recognize North Korea as a nuclear state and it is unusual for a president to publicly offer such a specific assessment of its stockpiles.
But Trump's mention of North Korea having 57 nuclear weapons is in line with previous assessments by the US government and think tanks that Pyongyang had an arsenal of 50 to 60.
After initially mocking Kim as "rocket man" and threatening "fire and fury" against North Korea, Trump met the North Korean leader three times during his first term. Their last meeting was in 2019.
Trump said they "fell in love" after exchanging "beautiful letters" -- but the headline-grabbing summits produced few tangible developments on the nuclear issue and they haven't yet met in Trump's second term.
Yet Trump has now pushed the issue back up the agenda since suddenly announcing on Sunday that he had ordered Washington to scale back "hostile" military drills with Seoul, citing his relationship with Kim.
Trump said on Wednesday that the drills were "very insulting" to Kim and that the North Korean leader -- the third generation of a totalitarian dynasty that has ruled the country for nearly 80 years -- had been "very well behaved."
- 'Completely unaware' -
The powerful sister of Kim Jong Un said Wednesday she didn't know about the reported communication between her brother and Trump.
"Regarding the recent news from Washington about communication between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, I am completely unaware of it," Kim Yo Jong said in a statement.
Kim Yo Jong nevertheless said her brother still had "good memories and feelings" about Trump and that the relationship between the two leaders remains "excellent."
Her statement came hours after Seoul announced the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises with the United States would end about a week earlier than planned "at the suggestion of the US side."
The Pentagon said the reduced drills would cause "no degradation to US training objectives".
The exercises are designed to prepare for a possible attack by North Korea.
Kim Yo Jong, however, dismissed the reduction, saying: "we do not consider it worth commenting on and find it completely uninteresting."
Nuclear-armed North Korea has long voiced outrage at the exercises, considering them dress rehearsals for an invasion.
The United States stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea to bolster the country's defenses, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
