North Korean leader Kim Jong Un set off for home by train on Saturday, two days after his second summit in Hanoi with U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly ended with no deal.

Kim boarded a special train at a rail station in the Vietnamese border town of Dong Dang and departed shortly before 1 p.m., heading back to North Korea through China.

Speculation is rife that he may stop by Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the way home.

Trump and Kim are believed to have been engaged in tough negotiations for two days through Thursday, trying to bridge the gap between U.S. insistence on full-fledged denuclearization measures and North Korea's demand for sanctions relief.

But the two leaders fell short of striking a deal, with the main sticking point being what North Korea offered in return for easing economic sanctions, aimed at preventing Pyongyang from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

During his stay in Hanoi, Kim also held talks with Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong, who doubles as general secretary of the Communist Party.

Kim became the first North Korean leader to visit Vietnam since 1964, when his grandfather and the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, flew to Hanoi via China to meet with then North Vietnam's leader Ho Chi Minh.

The current North Korean leader left Pyongyang last Saturday, arriving in Vietnam on Tuesday morning after a 70-hour train trip. From Friday, he stayed in Vietnam at the invitation of Trong.

This was the longest foreign trip for Kim since becoming North Korea's supreme leader in the wake of the death of his father in December 2011.


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