Singapore, June 10 (TNS): North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has arrived in Singapore for a scheduled summit with US President Donald Trump.
The meeting – the first between a leader from the North and a sitting US president – will take place on Tuesday.
Mr Trump described it as a “one-time shot” at peace and said the two were in “unknown territory”.
President Trump will arrive later on Sunday. The US hopes the summit will kick-start a process that eventually sees Mr Kim give up nuclear weapons.
The two leaders have had an extraordinary up-and-down relationship over the past 18 months, trading insults and threatening war before abruptly changing tack and moving towards a face-to-face meeting.
Trump’s first year in office was marked by bitter exchanges with Mr Kim as North Korea conducted several ballistic missile tests in defiance of international warnings.
The US president vowed to unleash “fire and fury” if Pyongyang kept threatening the US. He also referred to Mr Kim as “little rocket man”.
In return, Mr Kim called him “mentally deranged” and a “dotard”.
Despite the White House’s “maximum pressure” campaign, the North remained defiant and carried out its sixth nuclear test in September 2017. Soon after, Mr Kim declared that his country had achieved its mission of becoming a nuclear state, with missiles that could reach the US.
