WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump says his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will be held in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and confirmed the dates for the meeting in late February.
“My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un,” Trump wrote on February 8 on Twitter.
“It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28. I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1094031561861881856
Trump followed the tweet with praise for the reclusive Kim.
“North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse,” he wrote.
“He may surprise some but he won’t surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!"
A first summit, held in Singapore in June, produced a vague commitment by Kim to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, while Trump declared after the summit that the nuclear threat posed by North Korea was over.
But Pyongyang has yet to take what Washington sees as concrete steps in that direction.
The upcoming host, Vietnam, which has good relations Pyongyang, also has developed good ties with Washington, despite the decades-long Cold War conflict in which the United States supported South Vietnam against the North.
Vietnam was reunited under Hanoi's control in 1975 after communist troops from the North captured the southern capital, then called Saigon and now known as Ho Chi Minh City.