Trump-Kim Summit Delivers Signatures, Assurances and Show of Unity

By Charlie Campbell

Seated before a background of six North Korean flags and six Stars and Stripes, U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un signed unspecified documents at Singapore’s palatial The Capella Hotel on Tuesday.

“The world is going to see a major change,” Kim, dressed in his trademark dark Mao suit and horn-rimmed glasses, said during the signing.

“It worked out better than anybody could have predicted,” Trump told Kim. “It was a great honor to be with you.”

Trump added that North Korea’s denuclearization process will be starting “very quickly.” Specifics, however, were sparse. The document commits the U.S. to “security guarantees” and sets groundwork for “new U.S.-North Korea relations.”

Trump said he learned Kim is a “very talented man” who “loves his country very much” and agreed to invite him to the White House. “We have developed a very special bond,” Trump said.

Trump and Kim began the first ever summit between the heads of these longtime enemies with a one-on-one meeting, with interpreters, that lasted 38 minutes, followed by an expanded bilateral meeting with advisers before a working lunch. The summit ended early in the afternoon with the participants due to travel home that same day.

Photo Credit: AP / TPG

Speaking to reporters between sessions, Trump said the meeting was going “very, very good. Excellent relationship.” Kim was asked three times whether he would give up his nuclear weapons but did not reply.

“Well, it was not easy to get here,” Kim said. “The past worked as fetters on our limbs, and the old prejudices and practices worked as obstacles on our way forward. But we overcame all of them, and we are here today.”

During a walk along the hotel’s breezeway, Kim’s translator said, “Many people in the world will think of this as a … form of fantasy … from a science fiction movie,” according to audio from CNN.

Kim was in relaxed mood before the summit, leaving his hotel Monday night for a walkaround the Flower Dome at Gardens by the Bay with his sister Kim Yo-jong and other top deputies, even stopping to snap a selfie. Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan posted a photo of himself with Kim on Facebook. The sojourn even made the front page of Tuesday’s main newspaper in North Korea.

In an unprecedented sign of openness, the summit was transmitted in real time by North Korea’s state broadcaster KCNA. Normally North Korea’s 25 million people are normally only informed of such state events around 24 hours afterward.

There were two North Korean videographers, one cameraman, and one supervisor, all wearing a pin which bore the image of North Korean founder and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Reporters also noticed a female North Korean bodyguard.

Photo Credit: Reuters / TPG

The expanded bilateral meeting saw Kim joined by Workers Party vice-chairman Kim Yong-chol, and North Korean foreign ministers Ri Yong-ho and Ri Su-yong. Trump was joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Chief-of-staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser John Bolton, despite the latter being despised by Pyongyang for his recent suggestion that the regime follow the Libyan model of disarmament. In 2003, North Korea even described Bolton as “human scum and a bloodsucker.”

“He’s the national security adviser and certainly North Korea is a threat to U.S. national security, so I think it’s appropriate he’s there,” Bruce Klingner, former CIA station chief for Korea and now an analyst with The Heritage Foundation, tells TIME. “If North Korea doesn’t like that, well, [you can argue] we should exclude Kim from the room since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry ruled that he’s a purveyor of crimes against humanity.”

In a bizarre movement, after the working lunch Trump appeared to take Kim to check out his presidential Cadillac, in what observers suggested was an attempt to bond with the millennial despot.

It remains to be seen how the agreement will be implemented. Pompeo has promised North Korea an unprecedented and “unique” security guarantee if North Korea commits to denuclearize. But Christopher Green, a senior Korea analyst for the International Crisis Group, doubts that would be enough to make the regime give up its nukes.

“If North Korea can get some astronomical and unforeseen benefit, the leadership might be able to sell that to the elite and the people,” he tells TIME. “I don’t see that kind of offer on the table but North Korea will be aware that is one potential outcome.”

Despite Tuesday’s historic signing, Klingner highlights the regime’s brazen history of noncompliance.

“Well, first [North Korea] signed four international agreements promising never to build nuclear weapons, and then four subsequent ones promising to give up what they promised never to build in the first place.

“In January and April, Kim gave speeches [that said] we will continue to ramp up production our nuclear weapons,” adds Klingner. “That doesn’t exactly sound like they’re ready to give them up.”

© 2018 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Republished from time.com and published with permission of Time Inc. Reproduction in any manner in any language in whole or in part without prior written permission is prohibited.

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