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Trump Will Meet North Korea's Kim In Singapore In June

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seen at Peace House of the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone on April 27.
AP
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seen at Peace House of the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone on April 27.

Updated at 12:20 p.m. ET

President Trump says his historic summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un will take place in Singapore next month.

"We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!" Trump tweeted.

The talks, now scheduled for June 12, will mark the first time a sitting U.S. president has met with the leader of North Korea.

The announcement follows the release of three Americans who had been held in North Korea.

Trump greeted the Americans when they landed early Thursday morning at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington, D.C.

On the tarmac, Trump thanked Kim for the return of the U.S. citizens and said it was a sign that the talks with North Korea could be successful.

"I really think we have a very good chance of doing something very meaningful," Trump said.

The release of the prisoners is the latest sign that the relationship between Trump and Kim has come a long way from when the leaders exchanged threats and Trump derisively referred to Kim as "Rocket Man."

Tensions between the U.S. and North Korea have eased in recent months and Trump accepted the invitation for a face-to-face meeting with Kim back in March.

The stakes will be high when Trump sits down with Kim.

Trump has said he wants North Korea to completely shut down its nuclear weapons program.

In the past, this has been a key sticking point in negotiations with North Korea, as Pyongyang has disagreed with the U.S. on what denuclearization would actually mean in practice and how it would be enforced.

Kim met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last month and the two leaders agreed to work on a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War and ridding the peninsula of nuclear weapons. But the agreement did not include concrete steps for implementing the pact.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.