The first summit between the two leaders was held last year on June 12 in Singapore. The summit witnessed the signing of the joint declaration according to which both the leaders agreed on four things:
- Normalize and boost the ties between the US and North Korea.
- Formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.
- Return the US war remains.
- Work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.
- What happened after the Singapore Summit?
Immediately after the summit Trump announced that the US military would discontinue its joint military exercises with South Korea and also announced that he would bring back US soldiers at some point of time. The things went wrong on some parts, like the US was unhappy as North Korea had sent only 55 sets of remains of US troops killed in Korean War, but still thousands of other were not sent.
North Korea had said that it would work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but the time frame was never decided.
The Trump administration had imposed extra sanctions on the North Korea which seemed as if the US didn’t want to normalize things with North Korea.Kim also wants something in return over every step he takes towards denuclearisation. But its unclear what he wants.South Korean government is playing the mediator’s role between the US and North Korea. Here Seoul is also not sure about the demands of North Korea.
It’s unclear whether Kim wants the US troops to leave South Korea and pull nuclear-armed American bombers and submarines out of the surrounding regions or his demand is something else.
According to a North Korean expert, Kim wants to keep its nuclear weapons but wants to negotiate for the removal of US forces.
According to the experts, during this second summit both the countries will hopefully focus on reaching an interim deal which would not be like the vague agreement signed during last summit.