This archive report was first published on 29 June 2019.
US President Donald Trump has extended an invitation to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to meet at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean peninsula, in a move that has caught observers by surprise.
On June 29, 2019, Trump made the invitation on Twitter, saying he would have 'no problem' stepping into North Korea with Kim, in what would be a dramatic gesture re-enacting an extraordinary 2018 scene when the young leader invited South Korean President Moon Jae-in to walk across.
Trump's invitation comes amid a recent flurry of diplomacy over North Korea's nuclear programme after a Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi collapsed without an agreement in February 2019.
North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui described the offer as 'a very interesting suggestion', but noted that no official request had been received.
Analysts believe that Kim would agree to the meeting as soon as Washington follows up with an official proposal, with Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the private Sejong Institute in Seoul, saying Kim had 'practically accepted' Trump's invitation.
However, there is scepticism that a fleeting photo opportunity on the border, no matter how symbolic, would bridge the two nations' differences over the denuclearisation issue.
Trump will head to Seoul immediately after the summit in Osaka, where he held a highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that produced a truce in trade tensions between the world's top two economies.
