Trump Seeks Kim Summit This Year, but Pyongyang Signals Steep Price for a Meeting

North Korea praises an “excellent” personal rapport while firing missiles and dismissing scaled-back drills, as analysts say Kim now has far less need for a deal

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before the end of the year, but his overtures have met a cool reception in Pyongyang, which appears poised to attach demanding conditions to any encounter even as it describes relations between the two men as “excellent.”

Earlier this week Trump abruptly curtailed joint military exercises with South Korea, characterising them as hostile to North Korea. On Wednesday he said he expected to meet Kim later this year.

Trump is keen to revive negotiations with Pyongyang and secure a diplomatic success on the world stage, according to a person briefed on discussions between U.S. and South Korean officials.

The outreach comes with no end in sight to the nearly six-month war on Iran, and despite North Korea’s dispatch of troops and equipment, including missiles, to support Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Seoul has been privately receptive to Trump’s approach, the source said, though officials there retain reservations about scaling back joint drills. Trump may attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen later this year, which could create an opening for a regional meeting should Pyongyang prove willing.

“The United States remains open to dialogue with North Korea without preconditions,” a State Department spokesperson said, adding that the two leaders would meet again at an appropriate time.

The White House declined to comment. South Korea’s presidential office did not respond to a request for comment, while its foreign ministry pointed to an earlier statement voicing hope that Trump’s remarks would lead to meaningful dialogue.

Warm words, hard limits

Pyongyang’s reply, while praising the personal rapport between the two leaders, draws a clear line between that relationship and any substantive engagement with Washington, said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

Personal ties, Lim said, will not be permitted to compromise national security interests or the strengthening of military capabilities — a signal that personal diplomacy has boundaries and will not displace strategic priorities.

Kim Yo Jong, the leader’s influential sister, brushed aside the reduction of the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, saying its continuation remained aggressive and that U.S. policy towards the North was still hostile. She denied any contact had taken place between Trump and Kim while calling their personal relationship excellent. Should Washington attempt to present its recent steps as a goodwill gesture, she warned in remarks carried by state news agency KCNA, it would not receive the response it seeks.

On Thursday, North Korea fired roughly 10 ballistic missiles off its east coast, according to South Korea’s military — a move analysts read as a protest against the continuing allied exercises.

Pyongyang’s conditions

North Korea has set out terms that would make a summit worthwhile, and they represent very high bars for Washington, said Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center.

Those conditions would include substantial changes to U.S. policy to remove what Pyongyang deems hostile elements, along with acceptance of its nuclear status or at minimum a declaration that denuclearisation is no longer the American objective, she said. Whether Trump is prepared to satisfy those demands within his stated timeframe, she added, remains an open question.

The State Department spokesperson reaffirmed that Washington remains committed to the complete denuclearisation of North Korea.

Trump held an unprecedented series of summits with Kim in 2018 and 2019, but the process collapsed over U.S. insistence that the North surrender its nuclear arsenal. He has since repeatedly described North Korea as a nuclear power, though his administration continues to call for denuclearisation and does not formally recognise it as a nuclear-weapon state.

Kim also has weaker incentives than during Trump’s first term, when sanctions relief was his priority. North Korea has since deepened ties with China and Russia, and expanding trade with both has helped lift its economy.

The country now has options and is cultivating partners that demand no concessions, Town said, leaving little reason to rush into talks in which he would be expected to give ground on something he regards as essential to national defence.

Door left ajar

Even so, Pyongyang’s response appears calibrated to preserve the possibility of diplomacy, said Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

The central aim seems to be to encourage a more accommodating posture from Washington, Hong said, noting that the statement likely omitted any reference to Iran to avoid antagonising Trump. Rather than a rejection of dialogue, he characterised Kim Yo Jong’s remarks as an attempt to manage Trump’s perceptions, shape his understanding of the North and prepare the ground for eventual talks.

The statement was notably harsh towards Japan, whose military expansion and security cooperation with Washington and Seoul have become a growing target of North Korean criticism. Hong said Pyongyang is effectively proposing a bilateral framework with the United States that sidelines South Korea and casts Japan chiefly as a military adversary.

Relations between Washington and Pyongyang, he suggested, may be entering a phase of mutual probing and signalling.