[At stake is the nuclear future of North Korea and the security of the entire region at a time when Mr. Trump has questioned the need for a strong American military presence in northeast Asia.]
By Motoko Rich
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President Trump, who departed early from a contentious G-7
meeting in Canada,
has said he does not need to prepare for the two-day summit
meeting in
Singapore with Kim Jong-un. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
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SINGAPORE — Just over two weeks ago,
it appeared as if the summit meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un of
North Korea was not going to happen. A few months ago, the two countries even
seemed close to the brink of war.
But on Sunday, both Mr. Trump and Mr.
Kim arrived in Singapore for a historic encounter to discuss the future of
North Korea’s nuclear program.
The summit meeting, resuscitated at
the last minute, will be the first between an American president and a North
Korean leader.
Mr. Trump, who arrived in Singapore
after declaring he did not need to
prepare for the two-day meeting, will pit his negotiating skills against the
leader of one of the world’s most isolated countries.
At stake is the nuclear future of
North Korea and the security of the entire region at a time when Mr. Trump has
questioned the need for a strong American military presence in northeast Asia.
The American president arrived just
after 8:20 p.m. local time at Paya Lebar Air Base in Singapore aboard Air Force
One, a few hours after Mr. Kim landed at Changi Airport on a commercial Air
China plane.
Mr. Trump had flown straight from a
tempestuous Group of 7 meeting in Canada, where he had cut short his attendance
to head to Singapore.
Mr. Kim’s arrival on the Chinese plane
raised questions about the flight-worthiness of North Korea’s aging fleet of
mostly Soviet-built planes. This is the farthest Mr. Kim has traveled since he
took power in 2011.
The North Korean leader and Mr. Trump
are scheduled to meet on Tuesday, after a dramatic two-week run-up during which
Mr. Trump declared the summit meeting was off and then on again.
Earlier on Sunday, reporters scrambled
to track three planes headed from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to
Singapore. Mr. Kim landed in the afternoon a little after 2:30 p.m. and was
greeted at the airport by Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan.
Mr. Balakrishnan confirmed the arrival
in a message on Twitter that included a photo of his welcoming Mr. Kim. The
foreign minister also greeted Mr. Trump when the president arrived at the air
base.
International news media have
descended on Singapore, with the United States, Japan and South Korea sending
the most journalists. According to Singapore’s Ministry of Communications,
about 2,500 journalists had registered to cover the meeting.
A contingent of reporters spent the
steaming hot day staking out the St. Regis Hotel, where Mr. Kim’s motorcade
arrived shortly after 3:30 p.m. with North Korean flags flapping on the front
hoods of Mercedes-Benz stretch cars. Traffic was snarled along roads leading to
and from the hotel.
The summit meeting will be held at the
Capella Resort on Sentosa Island, a popular recreation spot off the southern
tip of Singapore.
Although there were nowhere near
royal-wedding level crowds, curious citizens joined camera crews and
journalists on the road outside the St. Regis to watch Mr. Kim’s motorcade
depart for a meeting with the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong.
“It is a big thing for Singapore,”
said Patrick Han, 29, an energy research analyst who came out with his mother
to wait near the St. Regis on Sunday afternoon. But after seeing how Mr. Trump
had alienated allies at the G-7 meeting, Mr. Han said, “I am not really hopeful
that a single summit will have tangible results.”
Ruairi Gogan, an American who has
lived in Singapore for 20 years, began tracking Mr. Kim’s flight on
flightradar24.com on Saturday.
“He is like Dr. Evil,” he quipped, as
he waited near the St. Regis. But, he added, the summit meeting “might be a
good thing.”
The St. Regis is less than half a mile
from the Shangri La Hotel, where Mr. Trump is staying. But while the Shangri La
is set on a residential stretch of road, the St. Regis sits on a busy
commercial boulevard next to a run-down strip mall with two money changers, a
pet store and “Maids R Us,” a hiring agency.
There were road cordons and a heavy
police presence outside the St. Regis, although officers took a gentle approach
when they urged those who had gathered outside the hotel with smartphones and
video cameras to move back from the wire barricades.
Outside the Shangri La, about two
hours before Mr. Trump was scheduled to land, the road was deserted except for
a few bystanders. Stanley Peck, 49, a doctor who lives nearby and was finishing
up an evening run, stopped to snap a photo of a large sign with a silhouette of
a machine-gun-toting police officer just outside the entrance to the hotel.
“Police checks comply with orders,” the sign read.
“It is interesting to know that a
small country like ours can have these two big boxers coming in for a fight,”
said Mr. Peck. “We are proud to host something like this.”
Given that just two weeks ago the
summit meeting had been canceled, Mr. Peck said, the prospects for the meeting
had already “come a long way.” He added, “At least they are here and at least
they get to shake hands. Hopefully.”
Across the city, Singapore has
tightened security for the long-awaited meeting. According to Kasiviswanathan
Shanmugam, Singapore’s minister for home affairs, about 5,000 police and
emergency responders are on duty throughout the summit events.
Already, he said, one traveler from a
“regional country” was turned away at the airport on Saturday. Immigration and
customs officers had stopped the man after determining that he was “behaving
very nervously,” Mr. Shanmugam said.
“He couldn’t answer their questions,”
Mr. Shanmugam said at a news briefing on Sunday. “They checked his mobile phone
and saw that he’s been checking through and visiting sites on suicide bombings,
and they made an assessment” that he should be barred from entering Singapore.
Mr. Shanmugam said there had been “two
or three” other individuals who had been barred from entering the country in
recent days.
At the international media center,
hosted at Singapore’s Formula One Racing Center, journalists gathered in a
building overlooking a racetrack to wait for the arrival of Mr. Kim and Mr.
Trump.
Some locals were capitalizing on the
attention focused on their small country. In a dining hall set up for
reporters, the Common Good Company, a consortium of Singaporean food
businesses, gave away ice cream in flavors like Kimchi (in honor of Korea) and
Durian, a Southeast Asian fruit.
Playing on the themes of the summit
meeting, the company displayed signs saying, “Durians May Be Thorny but
Relations Needn’t Be” and “Feeling More Trump-ish or Kim-ish today?”
James Kwan,
co-director of Common Good, said the company had decided just five days ago to
offer the summit-themed items. “We are doing what we can to facilitate peace
through food,” he said.
