South Korean President Moon Jae-in suggested President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort to help improve relations between South and North Korea, according to reports.
Moon’s remarks Monday were in response to a letter he received from Lee Hee-ho, the widow of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 after a summit with former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
She suggested Moon should win a Nobel Peace Prize for the ongoing negotiations with Pyongyang, but Moon said Trump should get it.
“President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace,” Moon replied during a cabinet meeting, according to a Blue House official who briefed the media on the statements.
Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last week for a historic summit at the village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone. During the meeting, the two leaders committed to ending the 65-year-old Korean War and signing a peace treaty.
A joint statement released following the gathering said North and South Korea are committed to working toward “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
Trump is expected to participate in his own summit with Kim, which would mark the first time a sitting U.S. president has met with a North Korean leader. A specific date and location is still in the works, but the president on Monday floated the Demilitarized Zone as a possible site for the meeting.
Trump and Moon spoke by phone Saturday to discuss the meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas. According to the White House, the president and his South Korean counterpart “agreed that the unprecedented pressure applied by the United States, the Republic of Korea and the international community” led to the breakthrough in relations between North and South Korea.
Moon said in January that Trump “deserves big credit for bringing about the inter-Korean talks.”
