Donald Trump has said he would like to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his upcoming trip to Asia.
I would. If you want to put out the word, I'm open to it, the US president told reporters onboard Air Force One as he departed for the region, adding that he had a great relationship with Kim.
Trump made history during his first term, becoming the first sitting US president to set foot into North Korea when they last shook hands in 2019.
His trip to Malaysia and Japan will see him meet a number of world leaders including China's Xi Jinping, amid trade negotiations sparked by Trump's imposition of sweeping tariffs earlier this year.
Trump has taken an atypical approach to North Korea - a secretive communist totalitarian state largely isolated on the world stage - and its attempts at creating nuclear weapons, initially taunting Kim as a little rocket man.
The pair met face-to-face three times during Trump's previous tenure in the White House but failed to agree on a denuclearization program. North Korea has since conducted multiple tests of intercontinental missiles, its neighbors say.
Asked if he would recognize North Korea as a nuclear state, Trump told reporters, I think they are sort of a nuclear power... They got a lot of nuclear weapons, I'll say that.
Kim has said he was open to meeting Trump again, provided the US stopped pursuing its absurd demand for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
I still have a good memory of President Trump, Kim said in a speech last month, according to state media.
South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who handles relations between the North and South, said there was a considerable chance the two leaders might meet while Trump is in South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum, according to news agency AFP.
A senior US official told reporters that a meeting was not in Trump's schedule, according to the Anadolu Agency - though their last meeting in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) came off the back of an invitation by Trump on social media.
Trump's first stop will be in Malaysia, where he will attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit.
He is expected to land in the South Korean city Busan on Wednesday ahead of the Apec summit.
He will meet South Korean leader Lee Jae Myung, who discussed peace on the Korean peninsula and the possibility of a Trump-Kim meeting while visiting the White House in August.
Lee told the BBC he was open to a deal between Trump and Kim in which North Korea agreed to freeze the production of its nuclear weapons.
Trump's meeting with China's President Xi comes on the backdrop of a trade war between the two nations.
The two have agreed to hold off triple-digit tariffs threatened against one another while seeking a trade agreement - but that detente is in jeopardy after Trump said he would level a 100% trade levy on Chinese goods over Beijing's curbs on rare earth exports.
The minerals are essential for many electronics and China is currently responsible for around 90% of exports of their refined form.
