“I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he’s going to be fine as long as we have a smart president,” Trump said.
Trump also argued that maintaining a personal rapport with the North Korean leader should be viewed as an advantage rather than a liability.
“The fact that I get along with him – that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons. They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got them.”
The figure Trump cited has drawn attention because estimates of North Korea’s nuclear stockpile vary. South Korea’s defense minister said Thursday that private research assessments put Pyongyang’s arsenal substantially higher, at between 80 and 120 warheads, while acknowledging that the exact number cannot be independently verified.
Trump’s comments came just days after he suggested that communication between his administration and Pyongyang may already be underway.
On Monday, Trump was asked why Kim had not responded to U.S. efforts to open a dialogue. Rather than accepting the premise, the president replied, “How do you know he hasn’t responded?”
Trump subsequently indicated that Kim had responded and characterized the interaction as “very positive.”
The president has repeatedly emphasized the unusual level of personal familiarity between himself and Kim. During his first term, Trump famously departed from decades of conventional presidential diplomacy by meeting the North Korean dictator face-to-face and later walking across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korean territory.
Trump has previously said that “Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect” and that “I understand him. He understands me.”
Now, that relationship appears to be moving back to the center of Trump’s foreign-policy agenda.
The renewed outreach also follows Trump’s decision to scale back the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercise known as Ulchi Freedom Shield. Trump said over the weekend that the drills were expensive and sent what he considered an unnecessarily hostile message to Pyongyang.
“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea. These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises! While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’ Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
The Pentagon and South Korean military subsequently shortened Ulchi Freedom Shield. The exercise began August 17 and had originally been scheduled to continue through August 27, but officials announced that it would instead conclude August 21. Some live-training activities were reduced, canceled or shifted into simulated exercises.
The move is significant because the exercises are designed to maintain the readiness of American and South Korean forces in the event of a conflict on the Korean Peninsula. This year’s training also incorporated lessons from modern warfare, including drone operations, cyberattacks and GPS disruption.
For Trump, however, the broader objective appears to be creating room for diplomacy.
The president has long argued that his personal connection with Kim gives Washington an opening that traditional diplomatic channels have struggled to provide. His first administration produced three historic encounters with the North Korean leader: a summit in Singapore in 2018, another in Hanoi in 2019, and the June 2019 meeting at the Demilitarized Zone.
That final encounter was particularly historic. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to step into North Korean territory when he crossed the military demarcation line at Panmunjom.
Yet the earlier diplomacy ultimately failed to produce a lasting agreement on North Korea’s nuclear program. Negotiations broke down after the Hanoi summit, and Pyongyang continued expanding its weapons capabilities.
There is also an important complication this time around.
Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, has indicated that North Korea has not recently been engaged in the kind of official communication Trump appears to envision. At the same time, she has acknowledged that the personal relationship between Trump and Kim remains positive, leaving at least some possibility that a future summit could be arranged.
North Korea also demonstrated that it has no intention of simply standing down militarily. On August 20, Pyongyang launched roughly 10 short-range ballistic missiles into waters off its eastern coast, underscoring the continued tension surrounding the peninsula.
That makes Trump’s proposed meeting potentially consequential.
A new Trump-Kim summit would put the president face-to-face with a leader whose nuclear arsenal has grown considerably since their first meetings. It would also test whether Trump’s unconventional strategy of personal diplomacy can accomplish what previous negotiations could not.
For now, no specific date for the meeting has been publicly announced. But Trump’s declaration that he expects to sit down with Kim later this year marks a clear signal that Washington is once again exploring direct engagement with Pyongyang.
Whether that outreach produces another historic handshake—or simply another round of failed negotiations—could become one of the defining foreign-policy stories of Trump’s second term.
