South Korea's president asks Trump to meet with Kim Jong Un

CNN

As he met with Donald Trump in the White House, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung asked the US president to work on establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula. CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier joins Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar to discuss.  #CNN #News  # news #breaking #24x7

Transcript

00:00We've been listening to President Donald Trump and South Korean President Yi Jae-myung at the

00:09White House in the Oval Office taking questions from reporters. A number of significant headlines

00:13during this first in-person meeting between Trump and his South Korean counterpart. The first since

00:18the South Korean presidential election in June. The president calling Yi Jae-myung a friend,

00:23saying that he feels very warmly towards South Korea. Notably, he was asked about relations

00:28between South Korea and North Korea. Trump touting his relationship with Kim Jong-un,

00:33saying that he hopes to meet with Kim Jong-un this year, even jokingly inviting the South Korean

00:38president to attend what would be a trilateral meeting together. Trump very quickly, though,

00:43after he was asked about meeting Kim Jong-un, pivoting, saying that Xi Jinping would like him

00:48to go to China. And then he talked about China giving the United States magnets in exchange for

00:53access to airplane parts and clearly trade with China top of mind there. The president was also

01:00asked about U.S. military presence in South Korea and what he described as a rumor about South Korean

01:07officials raiding U.S. military bases there. The South Korean president trying to clarify that,

01:12saying that the chain of command in the South Korean military was looked into after martial law,

01:18a sort of fake martial law, was installed in December. And there was some issues in South

01:25Korean politics, to say the least. But a lot of headlines there from Trump.

01:27So many. And he talked about denuclearization. He said Russia is willing to do it, referring to a

01:33conversation he'd had with Putin. And he thinks China is, too. We have our Kimberly Dozier here.

01:38We're going to talk with her about that in a second. That definitely needs a fact check. He also was

01:44asked about some domestic issues that we're also going to get to here, which is about the cities

01:49that he is planning to activate National Guard in, the search on John Bolton's house by the FBI. He

01:55quickly pivoted to what he called the raid on Mar-a-Lago at his own house, as he has done before. And then he

02:01was asked about Japan and Korea, because we should note that the Korean president is coming after a visit

02:09to Japan, which is kind of uncharacteristic. Normally, he would come straight to the U.S.

02:14versus his predecessors have. But because of, I guess, alliances that Japan and South Korea have

02:22with the U.S. being a little bit on less stable ground, it kind of speaks to Korea and Japan,

02:27who have certainly had their differences here in the past, kind of finding some common ground

02:32as they look to alternatives, as they consider these alliances with the U.S. economically and

02:39militarily a little bit more in question than usual. Kim Dozier, you were here. What stood out to you?

02:45Well, when he talked about denuclearizing the peninsula and said that Russia and China were

02:52willing, they've tried this before. And China has never been willing to join these talks and has

02:59instead aimed for parity with whatever the U.S. and Russia currently has. In terms of him talking

03:06about, hey, let's have a meeting with Kim Jong-un, ironically, this is the right Korean president to

03:13be talking to about it, because President Xi's Democratic Party has always wanted more economic

03:19ties, lowering of tensions, more relations with the North than the previous president, President

03:28Yun, who was, of course, deposed after he tried to declare martial law. So ironically, President Trump

03:36is reaching out to the right guy for that. But then he's also, in his tweet and then in these comments,

03:44he talked about South Korea having purges. And what he meant by that, it's emerging, is he heard

03:53about churches being raided. All that goes back to when President Yun was kicked out of office.

04:01His wife and a number of his high-ranking officials allegedly had used the Unification Church for

04:09kickbacks and corruption. And so the raids were part of that. But conservatives in the U.S. who are

04:15talking to Trump are saying that's an attack on the conservative community. So Trump is like, on the one

04:21hand, lashing out because he hears conservatives being dealt incorrectly with. But on the other

04:31hand, this is the right guy if he wants to open relations with the North. And notably, Yee jokingly

04:38suggested that a Trump Tower should be built in North Korea, saying, quote, so I can go play golf in

04:43Pyongyang as well. We saw President Trump, and he talked about walking into the DMZ and alleging that he

04:49had all these rifles pointed at him. Ultimately, though, no substantial agreement came out of

04:56this opening toward North Korea. Really the first time that you've had an American president

05:01literally go into North Korean territory to sort of open up a conversation with the hermit kingdom

05:08and Kim Jong-un. Again, nothing much came out of it. Do we expect things might go differently if

05:13that's attempted again? You know, it all broke down essentially over the denuclearization aspect.

05:21The North is not willing to denuclearize. They signed several agreements that were very vague,

05:27that talked about denuclearization as a goal, but they didn't have a ratification method or a schedule.

05:34And since that summit, North Korea has launched something like 100 plus missiles

05:40in missile testing has continued and expanded its nuclear weapons operations, according to experts

05:46who look at the satellite activity. So it's hard to see who or why Kim Jong-un would step back from

05:57the nuclear break. But Kim, this president puts a lot of stock in photo ops. Yeah. Right. I mean,

06:02we look to the Alaska summit with Putin and then really just what appeared to be this amazing

06:08shuttle diplomacy at the White House with all of these European leaders in Ukraine.

06:13Very quickly, though, it became clear that not much had come out of that summit with Putin.

06:19But I mean, the pictures are something you haven't seen before. The pictures with Kim Jong-un at the DMZ,

06:26something you haven't seen before. But in a way, that is enough. If you listen to President Trump,

06:34that is almost standalone to him as an accomplishment. But when you're looking at it from a national

06:40security perspective, that's not enough if it's short on deliverables.

06:45Yeah. You know, I remember having conversations with a group of MAGA conservatives during the

06:51administration where North Korea came up and they said Trump managed to denuclearize it. And they said

06:58to me, oh, no, no, Trump denuclearized it. And then Biden brought the nuclear weapons back.

07:07And I'm like, that's not what happened. But if Trump's base believes that, then these photo ops are

07:13serving a purpose. But back to the South Korean meeting, what's going to happen behind closed

07:18doors is Trump has been talking about pulling, possibly pulling out U.S. troops unless North Korea,

07:26South Korea pays more for basing them there. Costs about $3.5 billion to keep them there annually,

07:32about 28,000 troops. South Korea already pays a little over a billion for it annually.

07:38So Trump will surely be asking for a higher payment. Problem is with those troops and the threat of

07:45bringing them back to the United States, there literally isn't space for them to be garrisoned back

07:50in the U.S. There would have to be major construction to bring the troops and their families back to the

07:55continental U.S.

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