SINGAPORE: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un made history Tuesday, becoming the first sitting US and North Korean leaders to meet and shake hands, as they began to search for ways to end a tense decades-old nuclear stand-off.
The two men strode toward each other and shared the momentous handshake beneath the white-washed walls of an upscale hotel in neutral Singapore, before sitting down for a half-day of meetings with major ramifications for the world.
They shook hands for several seconds, Trump reaching out to touch the North Korean leader on his right shoulder.
As they sat down for their one-on-one meeting, Trump said that he's feeling "really great", adding, "We're going to have a great discussion and a terrific relationship."
After a 41-minute one-on-one meeting, the two men entered wider talks attended by their top advisers.
"Working together we will get it taken care of," Trump told Kim at the start of the wider meeting. "We will solve it."
"I believe this is a good prelude for peace," Kim said as the two men sat accompanied by top aides an hour into their meeting in Singapore.
Trump responded, "I do, too." Looking Kim right in the eye, he said "we will solve it, we will be successful."
"We will have a terrific relationship, I have no doubt," Trump said in brief remarks to reporters. He and Kim were seated with a small round table between them and their flags behind them.
"It was not an easy journey," Kim said. "We've had a past that stopped us from advancing, and wrong behaviours and practices sometimes closed our eyes and ears, but we've overcome those to come to this point."
After their 41-minute face-to-face meeting, Kim and Trump called in their senior advisers to continue their talks. Both issued brief, optimistic comments. (AP photo)
Their first, carefully choreographed encounter took place in the reception room of the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island.
Brash, impulsive leaders who only a few months ago taunted each other across a nuclear abyss ("dotard" and "little rocket man"), Trump and Kim have set aside their threats in a gamble that for now, at least, personal diplomacy can overcome decades of distrust.
The two men posed for photographers, then disappeared into a room with translators for a face-to-face meeting scheduled to last around an hour.
The summit was originally scheduled to last all day Tuesday. Late Monday, the White House announced the duration had been cut in half, with Trump and presumably Kim scheduled to leave for home after lunch - but with departure times flexible.
This is a negotiation that follows no known playbook: Two headstrong men - one 34 years old, the other 71; both of them products of wealth and privilege, but with lives so unlike each other that they could be from different planets - coming together to search for a deal that eluded their predecessors.
"I just think it's going to work out very nicely," Trump said Monday, with the confident tone he has used from the moment in March when he accepted Kim's invitation to meet.
The Trump-Kim meeting place is the luxury Capella Hotel (rooms 15,000 baht and up) on Sentosa Island. While each side has security, Singapore turned over site security to a special Gurkha force (below).
Trump said the "haters & losers" are complaining that his meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un is a "major loss," but noted that the US got its three captives returned and that the North's nuclear missile launches have stopped.
Trump tweeted early Tuesday from Singapore, just hours before his face-to-face with Kim.
North Korea's state media reported on Kim Jong Un's late-night tour of Singapore with unusual speed.
Pyongyang's official Rodong Sinmun on Tuesday filled its front page with photos of his visits to Singapore's landmarks, including the Flower Dome at Gardens by the Bay and the Marina Bay Sands resort.
The North's Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying that Singapore is "clean and beautiful and every building is stylish" and that he will learn "a lot from the good knowledge and experience of Singapore in various fields in the future."