Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe praised President Trump’s “courage” for accepting an invitation to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a translator relayed on Tuesday.
Abe appeared with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, where he’s expected to discuss trade and North Korea with Trump.
Japan’s leaders reportedly were blindsided by Trump accepting Kim’s invitation to meet in March, after the offer was shared by South Korea’s government.
Abe mentioned during the joint press appearance with Trump the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea, a politically sensitive matter in Japan.
Trump said that his planned meeting with Kim likely would happen in the near future. Details such as a date and location have not been disclosed.
“We will be having meetings with Kim Jong Un very soon. That will be taking place probably in early June or before that assuming things go well. It’s possible things wont go well and we wont have the meetings,” he said.
Trump added that he supported ongoing South Korean negotiations with North Korea to officially end the Korean War, which ended as a major conflict in the 1950s with a ceasefire but without a peace treaty.
“They do have my blessing to discussing an end to the war,” Trump said. “People do not realize the Korean War has not ended. It’s going on right now, and they are discussing an end to the war.”
Trump said he and Japan’s government were “very unified on the subject of North Korea.”
“North Korea is coming along. South Korea is meeting and has plans to meet to see if they can end the war and they have my blessing on that,” he said. “They’ve been very generous that without us and without me in particular, I guess, they wouldn’t be discussing anything and the Olympics would have been a failure.”
