North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Hanoi by car on Tuesday after a 70-hour train trip via China to Vietnam, a day ahead of his planned second meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, with all eyes on the future course of nuclear talks.
On a drizzly morning earlier at the border town of Dong Dang, Kim was greeted by senior Vietnamese Communist Party and government officials after alighting from his train. He was showered with applause and received a bouquet before climbing into a black Mercedes.
Rail was also the preferred mode of transport for Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. Since becoming North Korean leader following the death of his father in December 2011, Kim Jong Un has visited China by train twice before this trip.
[VNA/Kyodo]
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The summit between Trump and Kim is slated to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, with a focus on whether they can break an impasse over concrete steps toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which the North Korean leader has pledged to achieve.
The international community is also closely watching how the United States will react to North Korea's request to ease economic sanctions aimed at preventing it from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
On Tuesday night, Trump arrived at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reached the Vietnamese capital by air earlier in the day.
The White House abruptly announced Tuesday that it would relocate the media center for U.S. reporters from the Melia Hanoi hotel "due to technical issues." Kim is expected to stay there until late this week.
On Tuesday afternoon, Kim visited North Korea's embassy in the Vietnamese capital.
Kim has become the first North Korean leader to visit Vietnam since 1964. That year, Kim Il Sung flew to Hanoi via China to meet then North Vietnam's leader Ho Chi Minh.
Kim left Pyongyang by special train on Saturday afternoon, the Korean Central News Agency reported earlier.
His sister and close aide, Kim Yo Jong, and Kim Yong Chol, a senior ruling party official who held talks with Trump last month, are among those accompanying the North Korean leader.
During his stay in the Southeast Asian nation, Kim is also expected to meet with Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong, who is general secretary of the Communist Party, while visiting some facilities in the country.
The United States and North Korea have held working-level talks since last Thursday amid tight security in Hanoi. They have remained at odds over how to deal with the economic sanctions, sources close to the matter said.
The South Korean presidential office said Monday that Seoul hopes Washington and Pyongyang will declare an end to the 1950-1953 Korean War, which was halted by an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the United States and North Korea technically still at war.
Trump said at the White House on Monday just prior to his departure for Hanoi that he would meet with Kim and they would "talk about something that, frankly, he never spoke to anybody about."
"But we're speaking and we're speaking loud. And I think we can have a very good summit. I think we'll have a very tremendous summit," he said.
At their historic first summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018, Kim and Trump agreed that the United States would provide security guarantees to North Korea, while North Korea would work toward "complete denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula.
Negotiations between the two nations, however, have shown little sign of moving forward against a backdrop of the Trump administration's skepticism about North Korea's commitment to abandoning its nuclear arsenal.
