Trump and Kim met in the demilitarized zone

(Patria) - US President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
After shaking hands, Trump symbolically crossed the border, becoming the first US president to visit North Korea.

"This is a great day for the world," Trump said on the occasion.

"We will clear up the past and move forward into the future," Kim added.

Trump had previously been in Seoul, where he met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, after attending the G20 summit in the Japanese city of Osaka. Already in Osaka, Trump made a surprise offer to meet with Kim, Al Jazeera reported.
This will be the third time this year that Trump and Kim have met, four months after their last summit in the Vietnamese city of Hanoi, which yielded no results.

"When the third summit between the United States and North Korea will take place depends on what changes today's meeting brings," the South Korean president said at a joint press conference with Donald Trump.

Trump and Moon jointly visited the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas. Trump had wanted to visit the area during his visit to South Korea in 2017, but dense fog prevented him from doing so.

Moon had previously said that a meeting and handshake between Trump and Kim in the demilitarized zone would be a historic event that would give hope for progress in their dialogue.

"It would be a significant milestone in the process of achieving complete denuclearization and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula," Moon told Trump.
Kim and Moon held their first, historic meeting in this zone last year, and that meeting preceded the first US-North Korean summit in Singapore last year.

Moon has made great efforts to end hostilities between the US and North Korea, playing the role of mediator in encouraging North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief and security guarantees.

Earlier, Trump said that both he and Kim wanted the meeting to happen. "It will be a very brief meeting, a handshake. But that's okay. A handshake means a lot," Trump said at a meeting with South Korean business people, including the leaders of Samsung, Hyundai Motor, Lotte, SK, and Poongsan groups.

He stressed that he has a "good relationship" with Kim, but that there is still a long way to go to reach an agreement that will end North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for an end to sanctions and lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula.