Key Points and Summary – As President Trump heads to the APEC summit in South Korea, speculation arises about a potential meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
-Trump should refuse any meeting unless Kim offers concrete concessions beforehand.
Trump Doing the Trump Dance. White House Image.
-Granting the prestige of a presidential summit is a significant concession in itself, particularly to an isolated regime like North Korea.
-Trump must demand either meaningful talks on denuclearization or significant non-nuclear concessions, such as reductions in conventional forces.
-Without such commitments, the meeting risks legitimizing Kim without advancing U.S. or allied security interests.
Will Trump Meet North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un After APEC?
United States President Donald Trump will soon attend this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in South Korea. APEC is a regional Asia-Pacific body dedicated to lowering trade barriers in the region.
That mission has not stopped the spiraling trade war between the US and China.
But the event does provide a valuable forum for leaders of large Asia-Pacific economies to interact.
For example, it seems likely that Trump will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for a one-on-one discussion. This meeting could lead to a breakthrough in the trade war and be the most significant actual outcome, rather than just an official statement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in Vladivostok, Russia April 25, 2019.
Similarly, Trump may meet North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un while in the region. Trump met Kim three times during his first term, but nothing much came of it. North Korea’s nuclear missile stockpile is even larger now.
But Trump should not meet Kim unless Kim is ready to negotiate, as he was not in 2018.
A Meeting with the US President is a Concession in Itself
Trump, to use his own language, has the ‘cards’ in any meeting with Kim, and he should play them. The most obvious is the acceptance of a meeting itself.
As the leader of the world’s largest economy and most capable military power, Trump brings the unique prestige of the US presidency to his summits. This prominence explains the resistance to Trump meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer. Without receiving anything for that meeting, Trump lent his office’s prestige to a belligerent imperialist who has started the largest war in Europe since World War II.
Similar criticisms were raised when Trump first met Kim in 2018. North Korea has a long history of making threats against the US, including nuclear ones.
Trump should have demanded something in exchange for the prestige of a presidential meeting.
Such meetings have particular propaganda value for small, isolated dictatorships like North Korea.
North Korea is in a direct competition with South Korea, a US ally. America should not bolster the North’s legitimacy in the face of a US-aligned competitor without paying for that privilege. Elsewhere at the National Security Journal, I have suggested what that price might be.
Either Concrete Concessions or the Summit Dwells on Nukes
North Korea has made it clear that it does not want a Trump-Kim summit to cover North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
The Kim regime insists that North Korea is a legitimate nuclear weapons state and that there is nothing to discuss. But for the US-South Korean side, acceptance of this position is an immesurable concession.
Hwasong-20 ICBM. Image Credit: North Korea State Media.
North Korea nuclearized illegally—the UN Security Council sanctioned it repeatedly—and there is a rough consensus that North Korea will use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. North Korea is the most dangerous nuclear weapons state in the world, because it is far more likely to use its nukes than any other country with them.
If Trump is going to pass over this enormous issue, then he must get something in return, and it must be substantial. Conversely, if Kim will give Trump no concession on non-nuclear subjects either, while also blocking discussion of nukes, then Trump should not go.
In other words, Trump must get something—either a meaningful debate on nuclear arms control in North Korea, or non-nuclear concessions, such as constraints on the huge North Korean conventional force stationed flush against the inter-Korean border.
Without one of these elements, there would be no point in Trump’s attendance. Like the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, it would be seen as the American president seeking the approval of a strongman rather than pushing that strongman about American and allied security.
Can Trump Use His ‘Friendship’ with Kim?
The expert consensus is that Trump will probably not meet Kim. The meeting would be rushed, and it is unclear what Kim will offer Trump to incentivize such a summit.
But they may meet in the future. Trump appears interested. The challenge for him is to use his much-vaunted friendship with Kim to get concessions.
Strategic trust between the two sides is low, creating an opportunity for Trump to strike a deal based on his personal relationship. Trump insists he is a dealmaker. Can he do it?
Author: Dr. Robert Kelly, Pusan National University
Dr. Robert E. Kelly is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University in South Korea. His research interests focus on Security in Northeast Asia, U.S. foreign policy, and international financial institutions. He has written for outlets including Foreign Affairs, the European Journal of International Relations, and the Economist, and he has spoken on television news services including BBC and CCTV. His personal website/blog is here; his Twitter page is here.
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Jim
October 31, 2025 at 10:45 am
This discussion raises the issue of diplomatic procedure or lack, thereof.
Normal diplomatic protocol suggests summits between leaders are the culmination of a series of negotiation rounds between the respective nation-states’ diplomatic and technical representatives, who, taking and following directives from their respective leaders, attempt to take general directives and put them to paper in detailed and distilled form, which both sides agree on, then move on to the next issue, and so on.
When agreement is fully reached and put to paper as to all outstanding issues, then it’s submitted to the leaders to see if it is faithful to their directions and instructions… and intent.
If it does comport to the leaders’ directives and the final agreement is acceptable to both sides respective leaders, only then is a summit duly scheduled.
The summit is the culmination of negotiations, not the start of negotiations.
Trump wants the Big Summit with all the hoopla, and self-promoting P. R. where he negotiates for an agreement with the opposing leader… supposedly, achieving a breakthrough or something such as that.
Wrong.
It smacks of a lack of understanding how diplomatic progress is made on the international level between various nation-states and how those agreements are reached and finalized.
In other words, the requisite preparation via rounds of negotiations between the parties haven’t happened between North Korea, South Korea, and the United States, for any meaningful agreement or meeting between leaders.
Trump likes the “reach agreement in principle” first tactic and then emerge declaring in triumphant language that an agreement has been achieved, then leave the details to be hammered out afterwords by his subordinates as is often common practice in real estate transactions and other business agreements.
International diplomacy is not analogous to real estate transactions or business agreements.
Trump has it backwards.
(Note: Trump left South Korea without meeting the North Korean leader.)
Swamplaw Yankee
November 6, 2025 at 4:48 am
What is all this diplomatic Garbage from dzzzhhimm? When in 2014 POTUS Obama covertly unilaterally green lit the geopolitical loss to NATO of the Ukraines’ Crimean ancient soil, Families and Black/Azov Sea jurisdictional zones to the prime vile COLD War enemy of the WEST, Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin, the Yankee MSM missed all the fastidious state interactions + negotiations. POTUS Obama just made the joyful decision unilaterally, covertly to betray Ukraine to his marxist komrades. POTUS Obama was a wonder at unilateral deception of the American Public, as many publications document.
Today, in 2025 MAGA POTUS Trump must demand that the North Koreans send over 3-4 million “helpers” into Kremlin ruuzzkie Putin’s command. With this little bit of assistance from the PRC CCP XI boss, Putin can facilitate the meat grinder Genocide Line of Ukrainian Fathers.
As NATO refuses to accept the current reality of North Koreans fighting inside the European land mass, a few million more North Koreans should allow NATO to quietly slumber on and along.
As the POTUS just turned into the Orange Scarecrow, the inner need for Victory of the WEST is gone, poof, vanished. Orange Scarecrow and the MAGA elite can quickly promote that PUTIN use the millions to extirpate more Ukrainian Fathers in a shorter time frame! You know the code word, save all those lives. Therefore, Orange Scarecrow can more swiftly illegally gift Ukrainian soil, the Crimea, etc., to his cuddle butcher boy, ruuzzkie Putin.
Who would dare complain inside the new USA? -30-