U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday (August 25, 2025) he hoped to meet again with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, possibly this year, as he held White House talks with South Korea’s dovish new leader that got off awkwardly.
Hours before President Lee Jae Myung arrived for his long-planned first visit to the White House, Mr. Trump took to social media to denounce what he said was a “Purge or Revolution” in South Korea, apparently over raids that involved churches.
Forty minutes into an Oval Office meeting in which Mr. Lee profusely praised Mr. Trump, the U.S. leader dismissed his own sharply worded rebuke, saying, “I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding” as “there is a rumour going around.”
President Donald Trump, right, speaks during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in the Oval Office of the White House, on August 25, 2025
| Photo Credit:
AP
Mr. Trump said he believed he was on the same page on North Korea as Mr. Lee, a progressive who supports diplomacy over confrontation.
Mr. Trump, who met Kim Jong Un three times in his first term, hailed his relationship with the young totalitarian and said he knew him “better than anybody, almost, other than his sister.”
“Someday I’ll see him. I look forward to seeing him. He was very good with me,” Mr. Trump told reporters, saying he hoped the talks would take place this year.
Mr. Trump once said that he and Mr. Kim “fell in love” during their meetings, which reduced tensions but failed to produce a lasting agreement.
But Mr. Kim has since been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, securing critical support from Russia after sending thousands of North Korean troops to fight.
North Korea has dug in and refused any talk of ending its nuclear weapons program.
‘Trump Tower’ in Pyongyang
Mr. Lee, a former labor rights lawyer who has criticised the U.S. military in the past, immediately flattered his host and said Mr. Trump has made the United States “not a keeper of peace, but a maker of peace.”
“I look forward to your meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un and the construction of Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf there,” Mr. Lee told him.
He even cited propaganda from North Korea that denounced South Korea by noting that Pyongyang said the relationship with Mr. Trump was better.
Mr. Kim “will be waiting for you,” Mr. Lee told him.
In a speech after his meeting, Mr. Lee warned that North Korea could soon produce 10 to 20 nuclear weapons per year as well as a missile that can hit the United States despite pressure and sanctions.
“The hard fact is that the number of nuclear weapons that North Korea possesses has increased over the past three to four years,” Mr. Lee said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He highlighted his overtures to the North such as stopping the blaring of anti-Kim messages over loudspeakers on the military frontier.
Mr. Lee was elected in June after the impeachment of the more hawkish Yoon Suk Yeol, who was removed from office after briefly imposing martial law.
The raids denounced by Mr. Trump likely referred in part to investigations surrounding Mr. Yoon’s conservative allies.
Seeking to buy base
Korean Air announced after the talks that it would buy more than 100 aircraft from U.S. manufacturer Boeing, as Mr. Trump presses allies hard for business.
Mr. Trump, who frequently accuses European allies of freeloading off the United States, made clear he would seek greater compensation by South Korea over the 28,500 US troops in the country.
He suggested the United States could seek to take over base land, an idea likely to enrage Mr. Lee’s brethren on the South Korean left.
“We spent a lot of money building a fort, and there was a contribution made by South Korea, but I would like to see if we could get rid of the lease and get ownership of the land where we have a massive military base,” Mr. Trump said.
He also spoke bluntly about one of South Korea’s most delicate issues: so-called “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery during Japan’s 1910-1945 rule.
The South Korean left has historically been outspoken about Japan’s legacy, although Mr. Lee visited Tokyo on his way to Washington, a highly symbolic stop praised by Trump.
Japan had agreed to compensate comfort women but the deal was criticised by survivors who questioned Tokyo’s sincerity.
Published – August 26, 2025 12:09 pm IST
