US President Donald Trump said today he plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying the Asian country possesses 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons.
The comments come after Trump ordered Pentagon officials to cut short joint military exercises with the South Korean military. In a social media post on Sunday, he wrote that the exercises sent a message to Pyongyang that was “completely inappropriate and hostile to a country that has been non-provocative and respectful since Donald Trump became president.”
During Trump's first term, Kim called Trump a "mentally deranged old American" and threatened to have a "nuclear button" on his desk that he could use. The relationship between the two leaders cooled after their face-to-face meetings in 2018 and 2019, including a brief meeting at the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, when Trump became the first sitting US president to set foot on North Korean soil.
"I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he'll be fine as long as we have a smart president," Trump told reporters today during a tour of the helipad he is building on the historic South Lawn of the White House, Reuters reported.
"The fact that I get along with him - that's a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons," Trump said. "They should never have let that happen. If I were president, I wouldn't have let it happen. But he has them now."
Experts' estimates of how many nuclear weapons North Korea possesses have varied over the years. In June, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea "has probably assembled about 60 nuclear warheads and possesses enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more."
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
