South Korea president urges Trump to help make peace with North

SEOUL: South Korea’s president has urged US President Donald Trump to help him make peace with North Korea, “just as he has resolved the conflict in the Middle East”, Lee Jae Myung’s office said on Wednesday.

The US and Iran are set to sign a memorandum of understanding on Friday to end their war, and there has been speculation that the Trump administration may then turn its attention to North Korea.

Trump fuelled that interest shortly after announcing the Iran deal, posting on social media an uncaptioned photograph of himself with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their 2018 Singapore summit.

Trump asked Lee about developments in inter-Korean relations during an exchange at the G7 summit in France, Seoul’s presidential office said in a statement Wednesday.

During the conversation, “President Lee requested that he (Trump) take the lead in achieving a peaceful resolution to the North Korean issue, just as he has resolved the conflict in the Middle East”, it added.

“President Trump expressed his commitment to working toward a resolution of the North Korean issue.”

Lee has taken a dovish approach towards North Korea, in contrast to his more hardline predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol.

But Pyongyang has rejected his overtures, formally labelling Seoul its “most hostile” enemy and repeatedly declaring itself an “irreversible” nuclear state.

North Korea experts say the chances of a meeting between Kim and Trump is low.

“From North Korea’s perspective, there is virtually no reason to meet the US,” Yang Moo-jin, former president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.

Kim has sought to enhance his standing with his other neighbours, for example sending troops and munitions to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

He also recently hosted China’s President Xi Jinping in Pyongyang, soon after Xi had held back-to-back summits in Beijing with Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Neither Pyongyang’s nor Beijing’s official statements mentioned the issue of getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, an outcome that experts said indicated China’s tacit acceptance of them.