Trump Announces Second Kim Summit Will Be in Hanoi, Vietnam

While President Trump already reported that his upcoming summit with Kim Jong Un would take place in Vietnam during his State of the Union address, the formal announcement came through Twitter, on Friday.

Trump is now confirming that the talks will be on February 27 and 28 in Hanoi, and said he expects North Korea to “become a great Economic Powerhouse” because of how great and capable Kim is.

The two leaders held a summit last year in Singapore, and had agreed to a future meeting at the time, though the exact details were long withheld from the public. The goal of the talks will be to try to restart a peace and nuclear disarmament process for the Korean Peninsula.

While agreements were made in the first summit, the US refusal to give North Korea anything in return for its progress on denuclearization was quickly damaging the confidence in the process, and slowed everything to a virtual halt. US officials are reportedly open to offering some concessions during these talks, though whether they will hit what North Korea really wants, a peace treaty, remains to be seen.

The state of North Korea’s commercial airliner fleet somewhat limits where such summits can be held, and the choice of Vietnam is an interesting one. Hanoi does host a North Korean Embassy, though CNN suggested that the US might prefer Da Nang as a choice because it recently hosted an economic summit