Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would reportedly be willing to discuss North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear program with the state’s youthful dictator, Kim Jong-un.
“I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” Trump said of the North Korean leader during an interview with Reuters published Tuesday.
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“At the same time, I would put a lot of pressure on China, because economically we have tremendous power over China,” he added.
Trump’s comments come weeks after the U.S. Strategic Command detected a series of failed North Korean missile launches and hours after the State Department issued a four-page travel warning to U.S. citizens seeking to visit the country,
“It was a little bit more specific and a little bit more blunt in some ways,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said of the warning on Tuesday.
“I think that’s reflective of the increased tensions that we’re seeing there on the peninsula and certainly the way, the manner in which the regime has acted out against foreigners on travel to North Korea.”
Trump has previously said he would encourage the U.S. to reduce its military presence in South Korea and Japan, while simultaneously allowing both countries to develop their own nuclear weapons.
North Korean official Ri Jong Ryul, who serves at deputy-director general of the Institute of International Studies in the country’s capital of Pyongyang, told CNN in April that Trump’s suggested plan was “totally absurd and illogical.”
