OSAKA, Japan _ President Donald Trump on Saturday casually invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to meet him at the Korean demilitarized zone Sunday, appearing to offer to reopen talks that have been on hold since February and revealing a plan to visit the highly secured area that the Secret Service had tried to keep secret.
Trump first suggested a meeting in a tweet Saturday morning, writing: "If Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!"
He confirmed his invitation and travel plans to reporters a short time later, claiming that he "just thought of it this morning." (Trump actually first floated the idea of meeting Kim at the DMZ last week in an interview.)
"We'll be at _ we may go the DMZ, the border," Trump said, before momentarily going off on a tangent about the four-mile wide demilitarized zone that has separated North and South Korea since 1953.
"By the way, when you talk about a border, that's what they call a border," Trump said. "Nobody goes to that border, just about nobody. That's called a real border."
Trump also revealed plans to visit U.S. troops stationed at Osan Air Base in South Korea before returning to the subject of meeting with Kim, a possibility the White House had continued to insist was not part of the president's schedule.
"So we'll be there," Trump said. "I just put out a feeler because I don't know where he is right now, he may not be in North Korea. But I said if Chairman Kim, if we want to meet, I'll be at the border. We seem to get along very well."
He suggested the meeting could be short.
"We'll see. If he's there, we'll see each other for two minutes," Trump said. "That's all we can, but that will be fine."
Trump also told reporters that his diplomacy has led to a detente with North Korea, which has stopped testing long-range missiles but continued with short-range missile tests.
"If I didn't become president," he continued, "you'd be having a war right now with North Korea."
Trump's comments came during a breakfast meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, which he called "a great honor," and ahead of his sit-down with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the final morning of the two-day G-20 conference here.
Trump, who said that talks with China about trade have progressed, did not respond to multiple shouted questions about whether he intended to bring up the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year by Saudi government officials close to the crown prince.
"Thank you very much everybody," he said, signaling the press to leave the room.
Trump told the crown prince he was doing "a spectacular job."
