President Donald Trump got the history-making handshake he wanted with North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong Un. Now, with the smiling snapshot a part of history, new details are emerging about the bizarre behind-the-scenes negotiations that led up to the summit and about the president\u2019s post-summit frustrations with how it\u2019s being portrayed.<\/p>\n
Setting up the Singapore meeting was no easy feat for the technically still-warring heads of state, requiring planners to accommodate confounding requests and paranoia. But neither has it been easy for Trump to sell the plan to a doubting class of experts, allies and the media. He\u2019s chafing at the scepticism swirling about the nuclear accord that he wants to define his legacy.<\/p>\n
Like talking with \u201caliens.\u201d Sitting at tables at the luxurious Capella Hotel in Singapore or in the sparse Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula, that\u2019s how US officials involved in negotiations with their North Korean counterparts described their conversations ahead of the summit.<\/p>\n
The North Koreans had never before participated in an event of the sort, were unfamiliar with notions of press access and deeply afraid about both espionage and assassination. The North Korean logistics teams struck the Americans as organized, detail-oriented and mission-focused, said one official involved in the planning. There were also a number of women involved in senior roles, surprising to the U.S. side.<\/p>\n
On the day before the summit, US and North Korean officials met throughout the day in Singapore to hash out areas of agreement for what became the joint statement issued by the two leaders on Tuesday. The US team wanted to send in an official photographer to capture the moment for history a manifestation of the White House\u2019s desire to turn the summit into an international media event but the North Koreans balked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do we know she\u2019s not a spy?\u201d protested the North Koreans. They eventually agreed the photographer could attend, said an official familiar with the discussions with the North Koreans who wasn\u2019t authorized to discuss it and insisted on anonymity.<\/p>\n
Similar worries had come up earlier in the talks when the Korean delegation voiced concerns that cameras belonging to the press could be concealed weapons.<\/p>\n
There was hardly trust on the US side either. Kim, after all, is accused by the US of ordering the murder of his half-brother with a nerve agent last year.<\/p>\n
From the first logistical talks in Singapore, it was clear to US officials that overcoming the security trust gap was among the most significant hurdles to getting the two leaders into the same room.<\/p>\n
For every person the White House wanted to put in the room for the meetings, the North wanted to know how they would know the person was not there to spy on the proceedings or harm Kim.<\/p>\n
US officials credited the Singaporean government for helping to prevent the mistrust from sinking the summit.<\/p>\n
Checkpoints were jointly patrolled by US, North Korean, and Singaporean officials, with some journalists on site required to undergo separate security sweeps by each of the three parties. US officials agreed to cap the number of US government officials they allowed onto the luxury summit property to match the far smaller North Korean delegation.<\/p>\n
It left all but the most senior American negotiators, including many subject matter experts, monitoring the proceedings via television and emailed updates from the president\u2019s hotel, a 20-minute drive away.<\/p>\n
In a symbolic concession, the DPRK was listed above the US in the official summit logo on credentials for the summit. The White House also agreed to limit the number of journalists allowed to cover some events to mirror the North Korean contingent of state-run media.<\/p>\n
Still, Trump appeared to be in the driver\u2019s seat, clapping Kim on the back and directing over to their interpreters to start their one-on-one meeting. The US president also signalled for reporters in the room to be escorted out after both took questions from the journalists.<\/p>\n
On the final day before the summit, officials at the White House National Security Council back in Washington grew incensed over a New York Times report suggesting that \u201cscience is unwelcome\u201d in Trump\u2019s administration and that the US negotiating team was devoid of nuclear physicists. So the White House issued a directive to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: He would go in front of cameras in Singapore and call out the newspaper by name, an official familiar with the instruction said. Pompeo complied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump got the history-making handshake he wanted with North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong Un. Now, with the smiling snapshot a part of history, new details are emerging about the bizarre behind-the-scenes negotiations that led up to the summit and about the president\u2019s post-summit frustrations with how it\u2019s being portrayed. Setting up the Singapore meeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34195,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34196,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34194\/revisions\/34196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}