U.S. President Donald Trump said on the 17th (local time) that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un responded to his call for dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea.
Asked by reporters at the White House why there had been no reaction from Chairman Kim regarding the proposal to talk, President Trump retorted, "How do you know he hasn't responded?"
When reporters then asked, "So Chairman Kim has responded?", President Trump replied, "Yeah, he has."
Asked about the current stage of the dialogue, President Trump answered, "very positive."
The previous day, President Trump announced via his social media platform Truth Social that he had instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to significantly scale back the scope of joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises.
In the social media post, President Trump stated that he and Chairman Kim maintain a good relationship and that joint exercises could send inappropriate signals to North Korea.
This led to interpretations that President Trump sent a conciliatory message to North Korea with the resumption of U.S.-North Korea dialogue in mind.
President Trump did not specify when or in what manner Chairman Kim responded.
It remains unclear whether Chairman Kim's response came following President Trump's instruction the previous day to scale back joint exercises or if it referred to a past reply.
Asked if scaling back joint exercises prioritizes North Korea's interests over those of allies, President Trump responded, "I am making the situation much safer."
He added, "Chairman Kim has always respected me very much, and we've met several times. I understand him, and he understands me."
He repeatedly emphasized, "Chairman Kim didn't like Biden, he didn't like Obama, he didn't like anybody, but we get along very well. What I'm doing now is making the situation safer."
President Trump also posted a composite photo on Truth Social repeatedly highlighting his good relationship with Chairman Kim.
The image was overlaid with text showing Chairman Kim holding a phone and saying, "Hey Donald, we're on good terms, right?"
This essentially claimed that they share a close enough relationship for Chairman Kim to call him by his first name rather than a title.
The image portrayed Chairman Kim and President Trump as being connected by a direct hotline, though contact between the U.S. and North Korea is known to take place mainly through the North Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.
President Trump also stated that he recently held a phone call with President Lee Jae-myung to request South Korea's support regarding the Iran issue, but that President Lee declined.
This was a re-mention of the details he disclosed in his social media post the previous day.
President Trump said, "I recently called the President of South Korea, who I like, and said, 'Can you help us out a little bit? We don't really need help with the Iran issue, but if you want, lend a hand.' And he said, 'No, thanks.'"
In response, President Trump said he told President Lee, "Wait a minute. We have 39,000 troops stationed there protecting you from your neighbor Kim Jong-un, and you're not going to help us with a very easy military operation in Iran?"
The figure of 39,000 mentioned by President Trump mistakenly refers to the actual U.S. Forces Korea troop level of approximately 28,500.
President Trump stated that President Lee replied, "We'd rather not get involved," to which he retorted, "Then why are we getting involved in helping you?"
This expressed frustration over a lack of cooperation after demanding a level of support that an ally would find difficult to readily offer, while simultaneously framing the deployment of U.S. Forces Korea—which serves U.S. strategic interests—as a unilateral U.S. sacrifice.
President Trump claimed that during his first term, he asked South Korea to increase its share of defense costs and achieved some results, but that the subsequent Biden administration reversed them, adding, "We could have gotten a lot more money."
Mentioning both South Korea and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) together, he said, "We cannot go around protecting all these countries when they are not stepping up to help us."
At the same time, President Trump remarked regarding President Lee, "Actually, I think he's a very nice person."
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