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North Korea may be preparing for a missile or space launch, US news outlet NPR has reported, based on satellite image analysis of a key facility near Pyongyang. NPR said the images of Sanumdong, one of the facilities Pyongyang has used to produce inter-continental ballistic missiles and space rockets, were taken days before US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi for their high-stakes summit, which ended in failure. The photos by the firm DigitalGlobe show the presence of cars and trucks at the site on February 22, said NPR -- which has exclusive access to the imagery.  It added that rail cars and cranes can also be seen at a yard. "When you put all that together, that's really what it looks like when the North Koreans are in the process of building a rocket," Jeffrey Lewis, a researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, was quoted as saying by NPR on Friday. The Sanumdong analysis comes days after the specialised website 38 North and the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Pyongyang may have resumed operations at its long-range rocket launch site at Sohae, based on their study of satellite imagery from March 6. The development is likely to further compound Washington's frustration over the lack of progress in its bid to get the North to give up its atomic arsenal, especially after the February 27-28 summit between Trump and Kim collapsed without so much as a joint statement -- let alone an agreement on nuclear disarmament. According to senior US officials, in the week leading up to the Hanoi summit, the North Koreans had demanded the lifting of effectively all UN Security Council economic sanctions imposed on Pyongyang since March 2016. In return, Pyongyang offered only to close part of the Yongbyon complex, a sprawling site covering multiple facilities. The North is also believed to have other uranium enrichment plants. But North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho disputed the US account, saying Pyongyang offered to dismantle all "nuclear production facilities in the Yongbyon area" in exchange for partial sanctions relief. Trump said Friday that his relationship with Kim "remains good", despite the setback in Hanoi. US officials have said Washington believes the "final, fully verified denuclearisation" of North Korea is still possible by the end of Trump's first term. Kim released his first public message since the Hanoi summit on Saturday earlier this week, instructing propaganda officials to conduct "positive information" activities to spur scientific and technological development, according to a Saturday report by North Korean state media outlet KCNA.

North Korea has restored part of a missile launch site it began to dismantle after pledging to do so in a first summit with US President Donald Trump last year, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency and two US think-tanks reported. Yonhap quoted lawmakers briefed by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) as saying that the work was taking place at the Tongchang-ri launch site and involved replacing a roof and a door at the facility. Satellite images seen by 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea project, showed that structures on the launch pad had been rebuilt sometime between Feb 16 and March 2, Jenny Town, managing editor at the project and an analyst at the Stimson Center think tank, told Reuters. The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a report, also citing satellite imagery, that concluded North Korea is “pursuing a rapid rebuilding” at the site. “Activity is evident at the vertical engine test stand and the launch pad’s rail-mounted rocket transfer structure,” the CSIS report said. “Significantly, the environmental shelters on the umbilical tower, which are normally closed, have been opened to show the launch pad.” The news comes days after a second summit on denuclearisation between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un broke down over differences on how far North Korea was willing to limit its nuclear programme and the degree of US willingness to ease sanctions. The summit took place in Hanoi on Feb 27 and 28. Trump told a news conference after an unprecedented first summit with Kim on June 12 in Singapore that the North Korean leader had promised that a major missile engine testing site would be destroyed very soon. Trump did not identify the site, but a US official subsequently told Reuters it was the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground, which is located at Tongchang-ri. Asked to comment, the White House referred to the US State Department, which did not immediately respond. A US government source said the NIS was considered reliable on such issues, but added that the work described did not seem particularly alarming, and certainly not on a scale of resuming missile tests that have been suspended since 2017. Kim Jong-un also pledged at a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in September to close Sohae and allow international experts to observe the dismantling of the missile engine-testing site and a launch pad. Signs that North Korea had begun acting on its pledge to Trump were detected in July, when a Washington think tank said satellite images indicated work had begun at Sohae to dismantle a building used to assemble space-launch vehicles and a nearby rocket engine test stand used to develop liquid-fuel engines for ballistic missiles and space-launch vehicles. However, subsequent images indicated North Korea had halted work to dismantle the missile engine test site in the first part of August. The fact that the site had been dormant since August indicates the new activity is “deliberate and purposeful,” the CSIS report said. The breakdown of the summit in Hanoi last week has raised questions about the future of US-North Korea dialogue. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he was hopeful he would send a delegation to North Korea in the coming weeks but that he had “no commitment yet.” While North Korea’s official media said last week Kim and Trump had decided at the summit to continue talks, its Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui told reporters Kim “might lose his willingness to pursue a deal” and questioned the need to continue. US State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told a news briefing that the United States remains “in regular contact” with North Korea, but he declined to say whether they had been in contact since the summit. Palladino said US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun, who led pre-summit negotiation efforts, planned to meet his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.  Yonhap also quoted lawmakers briefed by intelligence officials as saying that the five-megawatt reactor at North Korea’s main nuclear site at Yongbyon, which produces weapons-grade plutonium used to build bombs, had not been operational since late last year, concurring with a report from the UN atomic watchdog. Yonhap quoted the sources as saying there had been no sign of reprocessing of plutonium from the reactor and that tunnels at North Korea’s main nuclear test site in Punggye-ri had remained shut down and unattended since their widely publicised destruction in May, which Pyongyang said was proof of its commitment to ending nuclear testing. The fate of the Yongbyon nuclear complex and its possible dismantling was a central issue in the Hanoi summit.

Activity has been detected at a North Korean long-range rocket site, suggesting Pyongyang may be pursuing the ‘rapid rebuilding’ of the facility after the collapse of the Hanoi summit, according to analysis of satellite imagery. Another research website suggested the rebuilding of the site may have started even before last week's meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump. The summit ended abruptly after the pair failed to reach an agreement on walking back Pyongyang's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The renewed activity was recorded two days after the talks and may ‘demonstrate resolve in the face of US rejection’ of the North's request for an easing of sanctions, said researchers at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). ‘This facility had been dormant since August 2018, indicating the current activity is deliberate and purposeful,’ it said. Kim had agreed to shutter the Sohae missile-testing site at a summit with the South's President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang, as part of confidence-building measures, and satellite pictures in August suggested workers were already dismantling an engine test stand at the facility. But CSIS said building activity is now ‘evident’ at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, from where Pyongyang launched satellites in 2012 and 2016. North Korea was later banned by the UN security council from carrying out the space launches, as some of its technology was similar to that used for intercontinental ballistic missiles. The respected Washington-based 38 North project, another independent research website specialising in North Korea, also reported building work at the Sohae facility, based on commercial satellite imagery. The pictures show a moving structure that had been used to carry launch vehicles to a launch pad on rails has been restored, it said. ‘Two support cranes are observed at the building, the walls have been erected and a new roof added. At the engine test stand, it appears that the engine support structure is being reassembled,’ the 38 North reported. In a briefing to parliamentarians this week, Seoul's spy agency said it had detected signs of work at the site. - 'Timing matters' - But Joel Wit, the director of the 38 North project cautioned that the evidence was not necessarily ‘consistent with preparations for an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) test’. ‘Aside from the fact that (North Korea) has never tested an ICBM from Sohae -- it's a space vehicle launch site -- preparation for any launch would require a wide range of activities not observed in the imagery,’ it said. Ankit Panda of the Federation of American Scientists agreed the imagery does not suggest an imminent sign of an ICBM launch, but it could be a ‘reminder of when times were worse and what stands to be lost if the process collapses.’ According to 38 North, the efforts to rebuild structures at the Sohae facility started sometime between February 16 and March 2 this year, based on what commercial satellite imagery shows. ‘Timing matters. ... the imagery tells a story that this took place amid the Biegun-Kim Hyok Chol working-level talks in the weeks leading up to Hanoi,’ Panda tweeted. ‘Choe Son Hui warned of Kim Jong Un's waning 'will' and Kim Jong Un himself warned the US not to test his 'patience' on Jan 1.’ - No deal in Hanoi - Impoverished and isolated North Korea conducted its first successful nuclear test in 2006 followed by a string of increasingly successful ICBM launches. In 2017, it claimed it had become a nuclear state, capable of fitting a viable nuclear weapon on an ICBM that could reach as far as the United States' eastern seaboard. In response, the UN Security Council later banned the North's main exports -- coal and other mineral resources, fisheries and textile products -- to cut off its access to hard currency. At their groundbreaking first summit in Singapore last year, Kim and Trump produced a vague statement on the ‘denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula’. There were high expectations for Kim and Trump's second meeting in Hanoi, but no agreement was reached. Despite the stalemate, both sides said they were open to further talks. John Bolton, the US national security adviser, however said on Tuesday that the US would look at ‘ramping those sanctions up’ if Pyongyang did not give up its nuclear weapons program.

South Korea President Moon Jae-in yesterday urged the US and North Korea to quickly resume denuclearisation talks after their Hanoi summit last week ended without a deal.  Moon, who has adopted a dovish approach to Pyongyang and brokered the US-North Korea talks process, urged his officials to find out what exactly had gone awry at the high-stakes meeting, and predicted a deal would ultimately be reached.  “We hope that both countries will continue their dialogue and that their leaders meet again quickly to reach an agreement that was held off this time,” Moon said during a security meeting in Seoul. “While I believe the North-US talks will produce an agreement in the end, I ask officials to work hard for the resumption of working-level talks between the US and the North as it is not favourable to have a long absence or stalemate in talks.”  The second meeting between US President Donald Trump and the North’s Kim Jong-un broke up in disarray in the Vietnamese capital, without even a joint statement.  Trump said at a press conference after the summit that the North Koreans had wanted sanctions against Pyongyang “lifted in their entirety”.  According to a senior US official, Pyongyang in return offered only to close down “a portion of the Yongbyon complex”, a sprawling site covering multiple nuclear facilities – and the North is believed to have other uranium enrichment plants.  North Korea rebuffed the claims, saying it had only wanted some measures eased, and that its proposal to close “all the nuclear production facilities” at Yongbyon was its best and final offer. “I ask that we find out the exact gap between the two sides that led to a no-deal at the Hanoi summit and explore ways to narrow down that gap,” Moon said.  The UN atomic watchdog said yesterday there were indications that Yongbyon’s reported centrifuge enrichment facility had been in use as recently as the end of February.  “However, without access, the Agency cannot confirm the nature and purpose of these activities,” said International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano in Vienna.  The IAEA uses methods including satellite imagery to monitor North Korea’s nuclear programme. About 100km north of Pyongyang, Yongbyon is home to the country’s first nuclear reactor, and is the only known source of plutonium for the North’s weapons programme. Yongbyon is not believed to be the North’s only uranium enrichment facility and closing it down would not in and of itself signal an end to the country’s atomic programme.  However, Moon said that if all Yongbyon facilities were “terminated in entirety, it should be considered the North’s denuclearisation has entered an irreversible stage”.

The nuclear reactor that is believed to have supplied much of the plutonium for North Korea's nuclear weapons appears to have been shut down for the past three months, the UN atomic watchdog said on Monday, without suggesting why. The 5-megawatt reactor is part of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex, the possible dismantling of which was a central issue in talks between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam last week. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has not had access to North Korea since Pyongyang expelled its inspectors in 2009, and it now monitors the country's nuclear activities mainly through satellite imagery. Some independent analysts, who are also using satellite imagery, believe the ageing reactor is having technical problems. "The agency has not observed any indications of the operation of the 5MW(e) reactor since early December 2018," IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said in a closed-door speech to his agency's Board of Governors, which is meeting this week. At the radiochemical laboratory that separates plutonium from the reactor's spent fuel, there were no indications of such reprocessing activities, Amano added. But a facility widely believed to be used for uranium enrichment, a process that can also produce weapons-grade material for nuclear bombs, appeared to be running, he said. And building work continued on an experimental light-water reactor. "At the light water reactor, the agency saw indications of ongoing construction work. We also continued to observe indications of the ongoing use of the reported centrifuge enrichment facility," Amano said. The IAEA has repeatedly said it is ready to play a verification role in North Korea once a political agreement is reached on the country's nuclear activities. The United States says it wants a full "denuclearisation" of North Korea, but the Trump-Kim summit's abrupt ending without agreement left the future of their talks uncertain. The reclusive state carried out six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017, and last year blew up tunnels at its main nuclear test site, which Pyongyang said was proof of its commitment to ending nuclear testing. North Korea did not, however, allow experts to witness the dismantlement of the site and verify what actually happened. Only a small group of international media handpicked by North Korea witnessed the demolition at the Punggye-ri site.

South Korea President Moon Jae-in on Monday urged the US and North Korea to quickly resume denuclearisation talks after their Hanoi summit last week ended without a deal. Moon, who has adopted a dovish approach to Pyongyang and brokered the US-North Korea talks process, urged his officials to find out what exactly had gone awry at the high-stakes meeting, and predicted a deal would ultimately be reached. ‘We hope that both countries will continue their dialogue and that their leaders meet again quickly to reach an agreement that was held off this time,’ Moon said during a security meeting in Seoul. ‘While I believe the North-US talks will produce an agreement in the end, I ask officials to work hard for the resumption of working-level talks between the US and the North as it is not favourable to have a long absence or stalemate in talks.’ The second meeting between US President Donald Trump and the North's Kim Jong Un broke up in disarray Thursday in the Vietnamese capital, without even a joint statement. Trump said at a press conference after the summit that the North Koreans had wanted sanctions against Pyongyang ‘lifted in their entirety’. According to a senior US official, Pyongyang in return offered only to close down ‘a portion of the Yongbyon complex’, a sprawling site covering multiple nuclear facilities -- and the North is believed to have other uranium enrichment plants. North Korea rebuffed the claims, saying it had only wanted some measures eased, and that its proposal to close ‘all the nuclear production facilities’ at Yongbyon was its best and final offer. ‘I ask that we find out the exact gap between the two sides that led to a no-deal at the Hanoi summit and explore ways to narrow down that gap,’ Moon said. About 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, Yongbyon is home to the country's first nuclear reactor, and is the only known source of plutonium for the North's weapons programme. Yongbyon is not believed to be the North's only uranium enrichment facility and closing it down would not in and of itself signal an end to the country's atomic programme. However, Moon said that if all Yongbyon facilities were ‘terminated in entirety, it should be considered the North's denuclearisation has entered an irreversible stage.’ The Yongbyon site is ‘the foundation of North Korean nuclear facilities’, he added.

Five years ago, their loved ones boarded a plane and vanished. The group of Malaysians meet about once a month - usually at a coffee shop or a home in Kuala Lumpur - to support each other and try to keep missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in the public eye. Their relatives were among the 239 people onboard the Boeing 777 when it vanished enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 and became the world's greatest aviation mystery. Scraps of aircraft debris have washed up on the east African coastline, but two underwater searches in the southern Indian Ocean proved fruitless, leaving few clues as to what happened. Starved for information and struggling to resume their lives, the families have come to lean on each other for support, said Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was MH370's inflight supervisor. ‘It goes beyond a group waiting for answers,’ said Gonzales, a 57-year-old kindergarten teacher who often hosts the group at her home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. ‘It has become a family as well, an extended family,’ she told Reuters. For five years the group has campaigned to keep public attention on MH370 and help each other cope with their grief and try to live normal lives by returning to work, raising children and, in Gonzales' case, battle illness. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 for the second time in her life, but it has since gone into remission. ‘When I first had cancer, I had my husband for support,’ she said. ‘This second time, no. But I had a lot of family members around, my friends, my children, and now my MH370 families... so that kept us going.’ In her living room hangs a painting of a blue-and-yellow field - a gift from Calvin Shim, another MH370 next-of-kin, to help her stay calm while recovering from surgery. Shim, a father of two, said the group helped him to adjust to life as a single parent. His wife, Christine Tan, was a member of the MH370 crew. ‘The other families know exactly how each of us feel,’ he said during a meeting at Gonzales' home. ‘Emotionally, that's been a good support and help to us, especially since the plane has not been found,’ he added. ‘WE HAVE NOT SAID GOODBYE’ In early 2017, Malaysia, China and Australia called off a two-year, $144 million search in the southern Indian Ocean after finding no trace of the plane. A second three-month search north of the original target area, led by US exploration firm Ocean Infinity, ended similarly in May 2018. A 495-page report published in July said the Boeing 777 was likely deliberately taken off course but investigators were unable to determine who was responsible. The Malaysian government has said it would consider resuming a search if new evidence came to light. Not knowing what happened in the aircraft's final moments has made closure ‘impossible’, Gonzales said. ‘When friends tell me that their spouses have passed away, I get very jealous because they have closure,’ she said. ‘They've said goodbye. But for us, we've not said goodbye at all.’

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un boarded his train to return to Pyongyang on Saturday, two days after nuclear disarmament talks with US President Donald Trump collapsed in Hanoi. Kim arrived at Dong Dang railway station in Lang Son province at the Chinese border at 12:30pm (0500 GMT) after riding 170 kilometres in a motorcade from Hanoi. The ride home in his armoured train will take around three days. Well-wishers, including students waving North Korean and Vietnamese flags and a ceremonial guard, greeted him at the station along with government officials from Hanoi. Kim arrived by train in Vietnam on Tuesday to attend a two-day summit with Trump to discuss nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula. Talks broke down on Thursday, however, and a celebratory lunch was aborted. Trump afterwards told reporters the North Korean had unacceptably asked for total sanctions relief as a precondition to disarmament. But at a press conference held in Hanoi late Thursday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho disputed Trump's version of events, saying Kim had only asked for partial relief. Following Trump's departure from Hanoi on Thursday, Kim began an official state visit to Vietnam. He met with President Nguyen Phu Trong at the Presidential Palace on Friday, where the two embraced. Before his departure on Saturday he also visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, the founder of modern Vietnam, whose remains still lie in state 50 years after his death.

North Korea yesterday promised further negotiations with the US despite a spectacular failure to strike a nuclear deal at their Hanoi summit, with both sides keeping the door of diplomacy open.   The high-stakes second meeting between the North’s leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump broke up in disarray Thursday, without even a joint statement.  In the aftermath, each sought to blame the other’s intransigence for the deadlock.  Trump insisted Pyongyang wanted all sanctions imposed on it over its banned weapons programmes lifted, and this was a bridge too far.   But in a rare late-night press briefing, the North Korean foreign minister said Pyongyang had only wanted some of the measures eased, and that its proposal to close “all the nuclear production facilities” at its Yongbyon complex was its best and final offer.  Despite the stalemate, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported yesterday that the two leaders had had a “constructive and candid exchange.” Relations between the two countries — on opposite sides of the technically still-unfinished Korean War — had been “characterised by mistrust and antagonism” for decades, it said.  Despite “inevitable hardships and difficulties” on the way to forging a new relationship, KNCA described the Hanoi summit as “successful” and said Kim had promised Trump another encounter. An unusually downcast Trump told reporters on Thursday that he would “rather do it right than do it fast,” adding: “Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times.”  After returning to Washington, the US president tweeted yesterday that his relations with Kim were “very good”.   “We had very substantive negotiations with Kim Jong-un — we know what they want and they know what we must have,” he wrote. The outcome in Hanoi fell far short of the pre-meeting expectations and hopes, after critics said their initial historic meeting in Singapore — which produced only a vague commitment from Kim to work “toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” — was more style over substance.  According to senior US officials, in the week leading up to the Hanoi summit the North Koreans had demanded the lifting of effectively all the UN Security Council economic sanctions imposed on Pyongyang since March 2016.   Before that date, the measures were largely focused on preventing technology transfers but more recent restrictions apply to several lucrative industries — coal and iron ore, seafood and textiles, among others — in an effort to force concessions from Pyongyang.  “It was basically all the sanctions except for armaments,” a senior US official told reporters. “It tallies up to the tune of many, many billions of dollars.”  In return, Pyongyang was only offering to close “a portion of the Yongbyon complex”, a sprawling site covering multiple different facilities — and the North is believed to have other uranium enrichment plants.   Trump had urged Kim to go “all in” to secure a deal, the official said, adding Washington was willing to do so. “The weapons themselves need to be on the table,” he added, pointing to both Pyongyang’s existing stock of atomic bombs and the ICBMs which can reach the whole of the US mainland. But the process was continuing and Washington was “encouraged by the opportunities ahead of us”, the official said. “There’s still ample opportunity to talk.”   Kim began a two-day official visit to Vietnam yesterday, while in Manila, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters: “We are anxious to get back to the table so we can continue that conversation that will ultimately lead to peace and stability.” Analysts said the failure to reach a deal in Hanoi did not herald the end of negotiations.  “I don’t think it’s a disaster and it doesn’t end the dialogue process,” said Chris Green of the International Crisis Group.  Trump could not afford to do “a quote-unquote ‘bad deal’” in Hanoi, he added. “I think it benefits him to look tough, to string this out.”  But others pointed to a lack of preparation ahead of the meeting, with the two sides unable to bridge the gaps between them in time.   Former US ambassador to South Korea Kathleen Stephens said the impasse “highlighted the importance of working-level talks but simultaneously narrowed the range of options”. Kim put “more emphasis” on sanctions relief than most observers predicted, she said, and mutual liaison offices and an end-of-war statement proved insufficient to persuade him to go further with denuclearisation.  Joel Wit and Jenny Town of the respected Washington-based 38 North project said that while there had been fears beforehand that Trump “was going to give away the store, he did just the opposite, holding out for a better deal”. “The two leaders are heavily invested in the process so hopefully, this failed summit will just be one more chapter in the rollercoaster ride that is the Trump presidency,” they wrote.

The US-North Korea nuclear summit in Hanoi ended abruptly without a deal yesterday, with President Donald Trump saying he had decided to “walk” in the face of Kim Jong-un’s demands to drop sanctions.   The much-anticipated second meeting between the two leaders was supposed to build on their historic first summit in Singapore, but they failed to sign a joint statement as initially scheduled and the talks ended in deadlock.  “Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times,” an unusually downbeat Trump told reporters. “Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that,” Trump said before leaving Vietnam aboard Air Force One to head back to Washington.   But Trump insisted he was “optimistic that the progress we made” before and during the summit left them “in position to have a really good outcome” in the future.  “I’d much rather do it right than do it fast,” he added.  He noted Kim had vowed not to resume nuclear or ballistic missile testing — something he previously identified as a yardstick for success — and reiterated their “close relationship”. “We just like each other ... there’s a warmth that we have and I hope that stays, I think it will,” he said. The outcome in Hanoi fell far short of the pre-meeting expectations and hopes, after critics said their initial historic meeting in Singapore was more style over substance.   The leaders walked away with no set plans for a third meeting, though Trump said he hopes to see Kim again soon.  Ankit Panda, from the Federation of American Scientists, warned on Twitter that the White House’s expectation of further talks “does not have to be a perception shared in North Korea”.  “Kim may have left irate, for all we know. He may have no intention of continuing this,” added Panda.  In the original White House programme, a “Joint Agreement Signing Ceremony” had been scheduled in Hanoi and a working lunch for the leaders. Instead both men left the summit venue without signing anything and Trump moved up his news conference by two hours.   “This is a major failure,” tweeted Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund peace foundation, saying it showed the limit of summitry, with “not enough time or staff” to work out a deal.  Trump flew around the world for the meeting and Kim undertook a mammoth two-and-a-half-day trek through China in his olive green train, travelling 4,000km. Kim will stay on in Vietnam for a state visit, which will include a wreath-laying ceremony at the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, before his expected departure on Saturday.  The US president, who touted his “special relationship” with Kim, frequently dangled the prospect of a brighter economic future for a nuclear-free North Korea, at one point saying there was “AWESOME” potential. From the outset, he had appeared to downplay expectations of an immediate breakthrough in nuclear talks, saying he was in “no rush” to clinch a rapid deal and was content if a pause in missile testing continued.   But Harry Kazianis, Director of Korean Studies at the Centre for the National Interest, said that no agreement was better than a bad one. “The challenge is North Korea’s nuclear weapons are already a reality,” he said. “Getting a deal that does little to nothing to remove that threat would be far worse than a flawed deal.”  In a phone call to South Korean President Moon Jae-in soon after the meeting ended, Trump “expressed regret” at not striking a deal with Kim, the South’s presidential office said. In Singapore Kim and Trump signed a vague document in which Kim pledged to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.   Progress subsequently stalled, with the two sides disagreeing on what that means, as the North sought relief from sanctions and Washington pressed for concrete steps towards it giving up its weapons.  As in Singapore, the two men put on a show of bonhomie in Vietnam, appearing to share jokes in front of reporters. Looking relaxed but appearing to say little, they indulged in a poolside stroll yesterday around the gardens of the luxury Metropole Hotel.   It was a far cry from the height of missile-testing tensions in 2017 when Trump slammed Kim as “rocket man” and the younger man branded the American president a “mentally deranged US dotard”.  In apparently unprecedented scenes, Kim answered unscripted questions from foreign reporters, saying he would welcome the establishment of a US liaison office in Pyongyang, which would be a step on the way to diplomatic normalisation. Before the summit, there was talk that there could be a political declaration ending the 1950-53 Korean War which finished technically with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.  There were also hopes Kim could pledge to destroy North Korea’s decades-old Yongbyon nuclear complex, which has long been at the heart of Pyongyang’s atomic development but remains shrouded in secrecy.  A patent distraction from the summit was a scandal back home in Washington with Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen calling him a “racist” and a “conman” during a congressional hearing.  “He lied a lot,” the president said simply in response yesterday.

* Pyongyang under sanctions over nuclear, missile programmes * Two crew: Russian tanker broke sanctions on fuel transfers * Tanker's owners have not responded to the allegations * Russia denied previous reports of sanctions violations A Russian tanker violated international trade sanctions by transferring fuel to a North Korean vessel at sea at least four times between October 2017 and May 2018, two crew members who witnessed the transfers said. Such transactions could have helped provide North Korea with an economic lifeline and eased the isolation of the secretive communist state, whose leader, Kim Jong Un, is due to meet US President Donald Trump in Vietnam this week. Primportbunker, the owner of the vessel the crew members said made the transfers, did not respond to requests for comment by telephone. No one answered the door when Reuters visited the building where Primportbunker has its headquarters in the port city of Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast. On the four voyages between Oct. 13, 2017, and May 7, 2018, the Tantal tanker gave its destination as the Chinese port of Ningbo when it set sail, according to port documents seen by Reuters and tracking data from financial data company Refinitiv. It then met up in international waters with a North Korean vessel to which it transferred its cargo of fuel, the two crew members who witnessed the transfers said. The two crew said the fuel transfers took place when the Tantal's transponder, which allows the vessel to be tracked at sea, was not operating. Shipping industry experts said this indicates the transponder was deliberately turned off or the Tantal had entered a zone not covered by ship-tracking radar. On each occasion, the transponder started operating again when the Tantal was close to port in Russia, the two crew said. They declined to give their names, citing fear of reprisals. "We got officially registered for Ningbo and went to the 12-mile zone (marking the limits of Russian territorial waters)," one of the crew said, describing four journeys in which he was involved. "We worked at night there with the North Korean tanker Chon Moyng-1," he said. Such transactions violate the international sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missiles programme, which include a United Nations ban on nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum exports to Pyongyang. Washington has accused Russia of "cheating" on sanctions and said it has evidence of "consistent and wide-ranging Russian violations". In earlier denials that it has violated sanctions, Russia has said such accusations are not backed up by evidence. Russia's foreign ministry and the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions, did not respond to requests for comment about the Tantal. The independent U.N. panel of experts that monitors implementation of sanctions also did not respond. Russia's Far Eastern Customs Administration said it could not provide information about the Tantal's voyages. The Seaport Administration of Russia's Primorye region, which includes Vladivostok, said it had sought information from the Federal Marine and River Transport Agency in response to Reuters' questions but the agency provided no information. One of the crew members who said he was on board during the transfers said the ship that received the fuel flew the North Korean flag and saw it had the name Chon Myong-1 on its side. The Chon Myong-1 was in March 2018 included on a U.N. list of vessels that have conducted so-called ship-to-ship transfers of fuel in violation of sanctions. Reuters' was unable to obtain comment from North Korea and the owners of the Chon Myong-1. The Tantal concealed its fuel transfers to North Korea by declaring when it returned to port that it had transferred the fuel at sea to a Chinese vessel, the two crew members said. A third crew member said the Tantal had met up on these occasions with a vessel that was not North Korean - the China-registered Hui Tong 27 - and told port authorities on its return to port that it had transferred its cargo of fuel to this ship. But the Refinitiv ship-tracking data showed the Hui Tong 27 was not in the area at these times. The Tantal also gave Ningbo as its destination on three other trips between October 2017 and May 2018, according to port documents and shipping data. The two crew members who spoke to Reuters did not cite any evidence that sanctions were violated on these three voyages. In December 2017, Reuters quoted two senior Western European security sources as saying Russian tankers had supplied fuel to North Korea on at least three occasions in the preceding months by transferring cargoes at sea. The security sources made no mention of the Tantal. A court in Vladivostok introduced bankruptcy proceedings on behalf of the Russian tax service against Primportbunker on Sept. 18 last year, according to a publicly available court order. The first stage of bankruptcy proceedings is still under way -- the company is now under temporary management which is assessing its ability to pay off creditors. If unable to pay, the company's assets will be sold and it will be closed down, according to Russian law. The two crew members who spoke to Reuters said they had not always been paid their wages on time. Denis Vlasov, executive partner in law firm Vladpravo which represented Primportbunker, said Primportbunker had tried to resolve its financial problems including wage arrears, but that Vladpravo stopped working with the company about a year ago. He said he knew nothing about the Tantal's declared trips to Ningbo. Shipping brokers cited customs data as showing that on three of the seven trips from October 2017 to May 2018 the Tantal was carrying fuel from the Komsomolsky refinery in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Russia's far east. The refinery, which is owned by state oil company Rosneft, did not respond to requests for comment. There was no suggestion Rosneft know of the alleged transfers at sea. Rosneft did not respond to requests for comment. The data quoted the brokers for the same three trips showed the oil products were acquired from the refinery by a small Russian trading firm, Mir Torgovli, based in Vladivostok. Mir Torgovli's buyer was a Chinese firm in Shandong called Worldmax Trading Co. Ltd, according to the data cited by the brokers. Mir Torgovli's chief executive declined to comment. Reuters was unable to reach Worldmax Trading. After completing the last of the seven voyages for which the destination was registered as China, the Tantal has not left Vladivostok port, according to the Refinitiv ship-tracking data. It sits at anchor offshore, shipping industry sources said.

US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will hold a second summit this week with no real expectation of a final deal on ridding the North of nuclear weapons but raised hopes for an official peace on the peninsula at long last. The two leaders are due to meet in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, on Wednesday and Thursday, eight months after their historic summit in Singapore, the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. At the time, they pledged to work toward the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, but their vague agreement has produced few results. US Democratic senators and security officials have warned Trump against cutting a deal that would do little to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Trump, speaking in Washington on the eve of his departure for Vietnam, said he believed he saw eye to eye with Kim and that they had developed “a very, very good relationship”. In a tweet, Trump stressed the benefits to North Korea if it gave up its nuclear weapons. “With complete Denuclearisation, North Korea will rapidly become an Economic Powerhouse. Without it, just more of the same. Chairman Kim will make a wise decision!” A South Korean presidential spokesman told reporters in Seoul the two sides might agree to a formal end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which the North has long called for as a major step towards normalising ties. “The possibility is there,” the spokesman, Kim Eui-kyeom told a briefing in Seoul when asked if an end-of-war declaration was on the agenda. In a speech on Sunday night, Trump appeared to play down any hope of a major breakthrough, saying he would be happy as long as North Korea maintained its pause on weapons testing. “I’m not in a rush. I don’t want to rush anybody,” he said. “I just don’t want testing. As long as there’s no testing, we’re happy.” North Korea conducted its last nuclear test, its sixth, in September 2017. It last tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in November 2017. Before that freeze, the North conducted a series of tests that it says has given it powerful nuclear bombs and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland. The United States has for years demanded North Korea’s complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation, before any concessions will be granted. North Korea denounced that stance as unilateral and “gangster like”. But in recent days, Trump has signalled a possible softening, saying he would love to be able to remove tough sanctions if there was meaningful progress on denuclearisation. Trump said he and Kim expected to make progress at the summit. He scoffed at critics of his handling of North Korea, and added that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been supportive of US efforts. Speculation that the Trump administration is open to a limited deal at the summit has raised expectations the two sides might finally declare an end to a technical state of hostilities that has existed on the Korean peninsula since the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a truce. In return, North Korea could allow international inspectors to observe the dismantlement of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, analysts say. The United States could also agree to opening US-North Korea liaison offices and allow some inter-Korean projects, provided the North takes steps toward denuclearisation. South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, who supports opening up North Korea, praised both Trump and Kim in comments in Seoul, and said those opposed to better ties on the peninsula, and between North Korea and the United States, should “discard such biased perspectives”. Trump is scheduled to arrive in Vietnam today evening, Vietnam’s foreign ministry said. Tomorrow morning, Trump is set to meet Vietnam President Nguyen Phu Trong, who is also general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, the ministry said. Vietnam has released few details about arrangements for the summit including its specific venue or timing. Kim is making his way to Vietnam by train and passed through the Chinese city of Hengyang at about 3.30pm, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. That means he would be due to arrive in Vietnam early today. No official details of his travel have been released.

A Kim Jong-un impersonator was hauled from his hotel yesterday ahead of his planned deportation from Vietnam before the real North Korean leader meets US President Donald Trump in Hanoi later this week. Howard X arrived in town with Trump impersonator Russell White last week, staging a fake summit on the steps of Hanoi’s Opera House amid a swarm of press and hired security guards. The real Trump and Kim will meet for a summit in Hanoi on February 27-28 to build on their first meeting in June in Singapore which failed to produce any concrete moves to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. The Kim lookalike was questioned by Hanoi police on Friday and informed he would be put on a plane back to Hong Kong where he lives. The impersonator was told by Vietnamese immigration officials his visa was “invalid”, but said he received no further explanation. “The real reason is I was born with a face looking like Kim Jong-un, that’s the real crime,” he told reporters yesterday, getting into a van headed for the airport with three Vietnamese men, not in uniform and who did not identify themselves. White will be permitted to stay in the city but has been asked to stop appearing in costume in public. The Trump doppelganger has been stopped on his Hanoi walkabouts by locals and tourists eager to snap a selfie with “The Donald”. Howard X said he thought he was being deported because the real Kim “has no sense of humour”. His plane ticket back to Hong Kong would also be cheaper for Vietnamese authorities than a flight for White back to his native Canada, he added. “Satire is a powerful weapon against any dictatorship. They are scared of a couple of guys that look like the real thing,” said Howard X, wearing a signature Mao-style black suit and thick black glasses. Vietnam is hastily preparing for this week’s Kim-Trump summit, deploying security personnel across the city, where hotels and government buildings are getting last-minute facelifts ahead of the meeting. The communist capital has billed itself the “City of Peace” ahead of the talks and is carefully corralling press events to avoid any embarrassing PR moments with the world watching the one-party state. White said he would remain in Hanoi for the week, though his earlier plans of playing a round of golf and visiting a massage parlour with the lookalike Kim are no longer on the schedule. Still, he said he’s committed to seeing progress at the Kim-Trump meeting this week.

North Korea warned President Donald Trump yesterday not to listen to US critics who were disrupting efforts to improve ties, as its leader, Kim Jong-un, made his way across China by train to a second summit with Trump in Vietnam. The two leaders will meet in Hanoi on Wednesday and Thursday, eight months after their historic summit in Singapore, the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader, where they pledged to work toward the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. But their vaguely worded agreement has produced few results and US Democratic senators and US security officials have warned Trump against cutting a deal that would do little to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The North’s KCNA state news agency said such opposition was aimed at derailing the talks. “If the present US administration reads others’ faces, lending an ear to others, it may face the shattered dream of the improvement of the relations with the DPRK and world peace and miss the rare historic opportunity,” the news agency said in a commentary, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Trump administration has pressed the North to give up its nuclear weapons programme, which, combined with its missile capabilities, pose a threat to the United States, before it can expect any concessions. But in recent days Trump has signalled a possible softening, saying he would love to be able to remove sanctions if there is meaningful progress on denuclearisation. Trump also said he was in no rush and had no pressing schedule for North Korea’s denuclearisation, hinting at a more gradual, reciprocal approach, long favoured by Pyongyang. The North also wants security guarantees and a formal end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a treaty. Trump said yesterday that he and Kim expect to make further progress at this week’s summit and again held out the promise that denuclearisation would help North Korea develop its economy. “Chairman Kim realises, perhaps better than anyone else, that without nuclear weapons, his country could fast become one of the great economic powers anywhere in the world. Because of its location and people (and him), it has more potential for rapid growth than any other nation!” Trump said in a tweet. He also said Chinese President Xi Jinping has been supportive of Trump’s meeting with Kim. “The last thing China wants are large scale nuclear weapons right next door.” In a letter to Trump last week, three Democratic chairmen of key committees in the House of Representatives accused the administration of withholding information on the negotiations with North Korea. “There are ample reasons to be sceptical that Chairman Kim is committed to a nuclear-free North Korea,” the lawmakers wrote. US intelligence officials recently testified to Congress that North Korea was unlikely to ever give up its entire nuclear arsenal. KCNA, referring to US fears of the North’s weapons, said if this week’s talks ended without results, “the US people will never be cleared of the security threats that threw them into panic”. Few details of Kim’s trip to Vietnam were announced until early yesterday, when North Korean state media confirmed he had left Pyongyang by train, accompanied by senior officials as well as his influential sister, Kim Yo-jong. In rare, revealing coverage of Kim’s travel, the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper featured photographs of the leader getting a red-carpet send-off on Saturday afternoon and waving from a train door while holding a cigarette. He was joined by top officials also involved in the Singapore summit, including Kim Yong-chol, a former spy chief and Kim’s top envoy in negotiations with the United States, as well as senior party aide Ri Su-yong, Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and defence chief No Kwang-chol. Other senior officials, such as his de facto chief of staff, Kim Chang-son, and Kim Hyok-chol, negotiations counterpart to US envoy Stephen Biegun, were already in Hanoi to prepare for the summit. Both sides are under pressure to forge more specific agreements than were reached in Singapore. The two leaders are likely to try to build on their personal connection to push things forward in Hanoi, even if only incrementally, analysts said. “They will not make an agreement which breaks up the current flow of diplomacy. (President Trump) has mentioned that they’ll meet again; even if there is a low-level agreement, they will seek to keep things moving,” said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Train Spotting Few details of summit arrangements have been released. Some lamp posts on Hanoi’s tree-lined streets are decked with North Korean, US and Vietnamese flags fluttering above a handshake design, and security has been stepped up at locations that could be the summit venue, or where the leaders might stay. It could take Kim at least 2-1/2 days to travel to Vietnam by train. Some carriages of a green train were spotted at Beijing’s station yesterday, but there was no confirmation that it was Kim’s. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Kim’s train had passed through a station in China’s port city of Tianjin, southeast of Beijing, at around 1pm local time. China has given no details of his trip. Its foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sales at Kim Chang-bae's hardware shop in South Korea rise every year thanks to Camp Humphreys, an enormous US military base he is frightened will close in the wake of the summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump. More than 28,000 US troops are stationed in the South to guard against nuclear-armed North Korea, part of a Seoul-Washington security alliance in place since the Korean war ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty. But with talks between the North Korean and US leaders in Hanoi just days away, speculation is building that the pair could agree to a treaty in return for denuclearisation measures from Pyongyang -- and that the withdrawal of US troops might follow. For South Koreans dependent on US troops to make a living -- like Kim Chang-bae -- that is a worrisome prospect. "Without the presence of US soldiers, many business, including mine, will lose their main source of income," said Kim, who sells bolts and screwdrivers to Americans stationed at Camp Humphreys, 60 kilometres south of Seoul. "It's a nightmare scenario." Camp Humphreys, in the city of Pyeongtaek, is the US' largest overseas military base, stretching across 14.7 square kilometres to accommodate 32,000 people -- soldiers and their families.  The camp -- home to almost all of the US troops in South Korea -- boasts a fleet of Blackhawk and Apache helicopters, a bowling alley, an 18-hole golf course, multiple schools, churches and cinemas. Hundreds of restaurants and shops ranging from nail salons to tattoo parlours have set up around the base, which is in the final stages of an expansion project that will see its capacity rise to 43,000 people by 2022. "It does worry me that they could leave the country," said Choi Eun-hee, who has run a Turkish restaurant just a few steps from Camp Humphreys for a decade. "At least 80 percent of our customers are US soldiers". - 'We go together' -  Choi, 43, attended a rally last month, where dozens from the community demanded US troops remain.  When AFP visited, banners reading "Anti-Americans, Get Out" and "We Go Together" were strung up among a cluster of American and South Korean flags. Shop owner Kim, 57, who is head of the local merchants' association representing 230 business owners, said Americans in uniform had become a "hallmark of the city's character".  If the war were to be officially declared over at the Hanoi summit -- the second between Trump and Kim after the two met in Singapore last year -- and a peace treaty subsequently signed, Pyongyang could raise objections over the presence of US troops in the South, analysts say. South Korean president Moon Jae-in has tried to quell concerns, saying in January that the North Korean leader had told him the end of war declaration had "nothing to do" with US forces in the South. "Kim Jong Un understands that the issue is entirely up to the decision of South Korea and the US," Moon said.  But Seoul has "no reasons to believe" Kim Jong Un's quoted assurance at face value, Kim Sung-han, professor of international relations at Korea University, told AFP. "North Korea is expected to say the US military presence in the South poses a serious threat to its security... It could claim true peace is only possible when US troops are out of here."  - Trump factor -  Even if a peace treaty is not secured in Hanoi, there is no guarantee US troops will remain with a highly unpredictable president at the helm who has flip-flopped on the issue of their long-term stay. Trump said on Friday that reducing US forces in the South "was not one of the things on the table" at the summit -- but he has repeatedly complained about the expense of keeping them there.  Seoul agreed earlier this month to hike its payment for maintaining the troops on its soil, but since the new deal is only valid for one year, the two sides may soon have to return to the negotiating table.  Song Wol-sook, 46, who runs a nail salon, said US withdrawal would leave South Koreans feeling isolated and alone in their own city, with a bleak future.  "It will leave pretty much every business here in ruins, including mine." kjk/aph/gle  By Kang Jin-kyu

* First N.Korean state media confirmation of second summit * Kim accompanied by sister, senior officials from first summit * Pressure for more specific deal than first summit in Singapore North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his way across China by train on Sunday, media reported, bound for a high-stakes second nuclear summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam's capital of Hanoi. Few details of Kim's trip have been announced but he left Pyongyang by train on Saturday afternoon for the Feb. 27-28 summit accompanied by senior North Korean officials as well as his influential sister, North Korea's state media reported. Trump and Kim will meet in Hanoi eight months after their historic summit in Singapore, the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader, where they pledged to work toward the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. With little progress since then, the two leaders are expected to focus on what elements of North Korea's nuclear programme it might begin to give up, in exchange for US concessions. In rare, revealing coverage of Kim's travel, while it is still going on, the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper featured photographs of him getting a red-carpet send-off in Pyongyang and waving from a train carriage door while holding a cigarette. He was accompanied by top officials also involved in the Singapore summit, including Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief and Kim's top envoy in negotiations with the United States, as well as senior party aide Ri Su Yong, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and defence chief No Kwang Chol. The North Korean leader's sister, Kim Yo Jong, who acted as a close aide in Singapore, is again part of the delegation, the North's KCNA news agency reported. It made no mention of his wife, Ri Sol Ju. The extensive coverage in the secretive North's official media was a contrast to the limited reporting that has traditionally prevailed during his foreign trips. Other senior officials, such as his de facto chief of staff Kim Chang Son and Kim Hyok Chol, negotiations counterpart to US envoy Stephen Biegun, were already in Hanoi to prepare for the summit. With scant progress since the June summit, the two leaders are likely to try to build on their personal connection to push things forward in Hanoi, even if only incrementally, analysts said. Both sides are under pressure to forge more specific agreements than were reached in Singapore, which critics, especially in the United States, said lacked detail. "They will not make an agreement which breaks up the current flow of diplomacy. (President Trump) has mentioned that they'll meet again; even if there is a low-level agreement, they will seek to keep things moving," said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. The Trump administration has pressed the North to give up its nuclear weapons programme, which, combined with its missile capabilities, poses a threat to the United States, before it can expect any concessions. North Korea wants an easing of punishing US-led sanctions, security guarantees and a formal end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a treaty. Few details of summit arrangements have been released. Some lamp posts on Hanoi's tree-lined streets are decked with North Korean, US and Vietnamese flags fluttering above a handshake design, and security has been stepped up at locations that could be the summit venue, or where the leaders might stay. It could take Kim at least 2-1/2 days to travel to Vietnam by train. Some carriages of a green train were spotted at Beijing's station on Sunday, but it was not confirmed it was Kim's. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Kim's train had passed through a station in China's port city of Tianjin, southeast of Beijing, at around 1 p.m. (0500 GMT). China has given no details of his trip. Its foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Two top North Korean officials who were not in Singapore but will be in Hanoi are Kim Phyong Hae and O Su Yong, vice chairmen of the party's Central Committee, respectively in charge of personnel management and industrial affairs, KCNA reported. O is a former minister of electronics and vice minister of metals and machine building. He might try to learn about Vietnam's development of manufacturing, analysts said. Kim Jong Un may tour some economic facilities while in Vietnam. Vietnam, like North Korea, fought a war against the United States and keeps tight control over its people and economy. It has been touted as a model for North Korea's development. Vietnamese media reported that a North Korean cargo plane arrived on Sunday carrying personnel who appeared to be Kim's security guards and state media workers. They were driven under police escort to a downtown hotel. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s armoured train arrived in China late yesterday ahead of his highly anticipated second summit with US President Donald Trump in Vietnam, according to media reports. The train arrived in the border city of Dandong after 9pm local time (1300 GMT), according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and the specialist outlet NK News, though it was not known whether Kim was on board. The train’s crossing into China follows days of speculation over Kim’s travel plans, which remain shrouded in secrecy, as his team gathered in Hanoi ahead of the talks expected next Wednesday and Thursday. Security was tight before the train’s arrival, with police cordoning off the riverfront some 100m (yards) from the bridge with tape and metal barriers, and leading an AFP journalist out of the area.  Guests at a hotel facing the rail bridge from North Korea were suddenly asked to leave on Friday and told it was closed for impromptu renovations.  “The train is long and crossed the bridge slower than the tourist train, but it is definitely him, there’s a lot of police presence,” an unidentified source told NK News. Windows on the train were blacked out, the source said, with only headlights turned on as it crossed. Kim has previously travelled in an armoured train to Beijing and, if he is on board, may stop in the Chinese capital on what could be an epic journey to Vietnam, meeting President Xi Jinping prior to his second face-to-face with the US president. Or he could save the meeting for his return trip to debrief his country’s sole major ally. Trump and Kim met in June in Singapore, producing a vaguely worded agreement on denuclearisation, but progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what the  agreement meant. Observers say tangible progress is needed in Hanoi to avoid the talks being dismissed as a publicity stunt. Kim travelled to Singapore last year on a plane lent by Beijing, and it remained unclear whether he would ride all the way to Hanoi by rail - a nearly 4,000km (2,500-mile) journey taking more than 60 hours from Pyongyang. Another option would be to take the train to Beijing and catch a plane to the Vietnamese capital. But several sources said Kim was expected to arrive in Vietnam by train, stopping at the Dong Dang train station near the China border, then driving to Hanoi. Yesterday, soldiers were deployed to Dong Dang station and along the road to the capital. It came after Vietnam announced the unprecedented move of closing that 170km stretch of road on Tuesday between 6am and 2pm – suggesting Kim could travel on the road between those hours. The Vietnamese foreign ministry said yesterday that Kim would “pay an official visit to Vietnam in the coming days”. He is expected to tack on a visit to industrial zones in Vietnam’s Quang Ninh and Bac Ninh provinces, sources told AFP. Rail travel is a family tradition that was started by Kim’s grandfather, the North’s founder Kim Il Sung. His late father, Kim jong-il, travelled all the way to Moscow by train in 2001. “It sends a strong message to North Koreans that Kim Jong-un has inherited his grandfather’s good qualities, and the Kim Dynasty is stronger than ever,” Koh Yu-hwan, professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University, said. Jeong Young-tae of the Institute of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the safest way to travel would be to take a plane provided by Beijing. “But by choosing to travel by their own special train over a Chinese aircraft, Pyongyang may be signalling its willingness to be independent.” China has one of the most extensive railway systems in the world, with 130,000km of tracks – enough infrastructure to circle the Earth three times. Still, a journey from China’s frozen northern border to subtropical Vietnam would present a logistical headache and  complex security challenges. “The best route is the Beijing-Guangzhou line,” said Zhao Jian, who studies China’s railway system at Beijing Jiaotong University, describing a route that would see Kim travel straight down to southern China, before heading west into Guangxi province, which borders Vietnam. Justin Hastings, associate professor in international relations at the University of Sydney, said that would be “a pretty major operation”. “They would have to clear the tracks, they would have to provide security for basically the entire length of the Chinese eastern seaboard,” he said. But China may view the hassle as a necessary cost to get Kim to the summit, he said. “China wants North Korea to make some steps to denuclearise as much as anyone else.”

At South Korea’s northernmost train station, the tracks stop abruptly ahead of the demilitarised zone that marks the North Korean border. A sign reads: “The steel horse wants to run.” That may soon become a reality as US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un prepare for a second summit next week in Vietnam. The outcome is expected to include some easing of sanctions in return for steps towards denuclearisation – with a rail link first mooted more than 15 years ago one of several key inter-Korean projects that might finally get approved. In a phone call with Trump this week, President Moon Jae-in said South Korea was ready to move forward with the rail link and other unspecified economic projects if it helped the negotiations. The talks may also include opening the Gaeseong inter-Korean industrial complex, where more than 120 of the nation’s companies were operating before it was closed in 2016 amid rising tensions. “We are doing everything – we are ready to go whenever there is an opportunity,” said Shin Han-yong, head of the corporate association of South Korean companies that operated Gaeseong. Still, he added, many executives were cautious due to the uncertainty over whether a deal can be struck: “It’s not bad, but it’s also difficult to be too optimistic.” Since declaring a halt to missile and bomb tests last year, Kim has sought to convince the world to lift punitive sanctions that prohibit investment, severely curtail exports and limit oil and gas imports. Trump has so far insisted that Kim give up his nuclear weapons before sanctions are lifted – a stance that has led to a stalemate in the talks. Kim and Moon have already laid the groundwork for the rail link over the past year, holding a ceremony in December on modernising lines in the east and west of the peninsula, which will be followed by additional studies and drawing up designs. While the move would benefit Kim, South Korea also wants to connect with the rest of Asia by land and ultimately link up with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative designed to boost trade between Europe and Asia. The rail project was first launched more than 15 years ago, but scuttled by political acrimony and global sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its pursuit of nuclear weapons. For a brief period about a decade ago, South Korea ran freight trains into the industrial park in Gaeseong, until political tensions undermined the project. Restoring the connection and modernising North Korea’s railways would allow South Korea to run trains into Russia, China and beyond, reducing the shipping costs for its export- heavy economy. Improved infrastructure would also help North Korea lift barriers to monetising its mineral resources, which could be worth $6tn, according to a 2013 estimate by the North Korea Resources Institute in Seoul. It’s also home to what might be the world’s single-biggest deposit of rare earth minerals, crucial for producing key elements of electronic car engines and many high-tech gadgets that South Korea churns out. “The rail project is different from the past projects because this is not only aimed at connecting South Korea to the rest of Asia, but it’s also aimed at improving logistics in the North,” said Lee Hae-jung, a senior researcher at Hyundai Research Institute in Seoul. “Rails and roads are important for economies to grow, so helping the North modernise its transport system could really help lift the North’s economy.” While a lack of information makes it difficult to measure North Korea’s economy, South Korea’s central bank estimates that it contracted 3.5% in 2017 to about $32.3bn. That gives it about 2% the gross domestic product of South Korea, providing a rare ground-up opportunity for investors if the country opens up. North Korea’s rail network and signalling hasn’t changed much from when it was rebuilt after the 1950-53 Korean War. It has five lines that link with China, Russia and South Korea. The two lines with China has been the most active and probably the most modern in the North. The rail agreement could benefit South Korean companies from construction to rolling stock makers such as Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co and Hyundai Rotem Co, putting them in a better position against rivals from China that may also want to jump in. Still, many companies have been burned by North Korea in the past. Hyundai Group set up a tourism resort in Mount Geumgang and the industrial park in Gaeseong only to see North Korea take over the projects. Sweden is still awaiting payment for 1,000 Volvo sedans shipped in the 1970s. A Chinese mining company called its four-year venture in the isolated nation a “nightmare.” And an Egyptian telecommunications giant doing business there can’t repatriate its profits. Investors from China, North Korea’s economic patron, have also been burned. Xiyang Group signed a contract in 2007 to set up a venture with the government to process 500,000 tonnes of iron ore per year. Five years later, Pyongyang terminated the deal and cut off the plant’s access to water, electricity and communications. Xiyang issued a terse statement after it didn’t receive a cent of compensation. Still, there is more optimism this time that a thaw is around the corner. Kim in January specifically offered to resume work at the Gaeseong industrial park and the Mount Geumgang resort in North Korea, and the US has shown a greater willingness to ease sanctions in return for denuclearisation steps. The facilities provide cash-starved North Korea with hard currency. South Korean companies have already done research and are ready to move in once sanctions ease, according to Kim Young Hui, a North Korea-born economist at the Korea Development Bank in Seoul. “The mood has calmed down as things didn’t pan out well, but the fire is being rekindled at this point,” she said. “Now they quietly wait and see.”

North Korea has warned that it is facing a food shortfall of some 1.4mn tonnes in 2019 and has been forced to almost halve rations, blaming high temperatures, drought, floods and United Nations sanctions in a memo seen by Reuters.  The release of the undated two-page memo by the North Korean mission to the United Nations comes ahead of a second summit next week between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Washington has been demanding that North Korea give up a nuclear weapons programme that threatens the United States, while North Korea has been seeking a lifting of punishing sanctions, a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War and security guarantees.  The 15-member UN Security Council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.  “The DPRK government calls on international organisations to urgently respond to addressing the food situation,” read the North Korean memo, which the country’s UN mission described as a follow-up to joint assessment with the World Food Programme between Nov 26 and Dec 7, 2018. WFP declined to comment. The official name for North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The memo said North Korea’s food production last year was 4.951mn tonnes, 503,000 tonnes down on 2017.  The United Nations confirmed these figures as official government data provided at the end of January and said North Korea’s food production included rice, wheat, potatoes and soy beans. North Korea said it would import 200,000 tonnes of food and produce about 400,000 tonnes of early crops, but that it would still be left with a gap and from January would cut daily rations to 300g per person from 550g. UN officials and aid groups in North Korea were consulting the government to “further understand the impact of the food security situation on the most vulnerable people in order to take early action to address their humanitarian needs,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday.  He said the United Nations and aid groups were only able to help one third of 6mn people estimated to be in need last year due to a lack of funding. A UN appeal for $111mn in 2018 was only a quarter funded, Dujarric said. The United Nations estimates a total of 10.3mn people —almost half the population — are in need and some 41% of North Koreans are undernourished, Dujarric said. Along with extreme weather, the North Korean memo also blames UN sanctions for restricting the delivery of farming materials and hindering fuel supply for the agricultural sector. US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun said earlier this month the United States had eased rules on humanitarian assistance to North Korea and was working to clear a backlog of UN approvals.  Benjamin Silberstein, co-editor of North Korean Economy Watch and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said the harvest had been bad but there was no sign of an emergency.  “Of course it’s at least partially about the sanctions,” Silberstein said. “Just look at the way the letter is worded. They want to make it sound like sanctions equals starvation so the US should really be benevolent and give them up,” he said. Humanitarian aid nearly ground to a halt in 2018 as the United States stepped up enforcement of UN sanctions, even though the Security Council North Korea sanctions committee has said sanctions “are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population.”  “While Security Council sanctions clearly exempt humanitarian activities, there have been unintended consequences on humanitarian operations,” Dujarric said. Margareta Wahlstrom, president of the Swedish Red Cross, told Reuters after a trip to North Korea in November that, as far as the areas in which they operated were concerned, the maze harvest was only 65% of what should be normal due to the combination of an influenza outbreak, a heat wave and a typhoon.  Russia is considering sending 50,000 tonnes of wheat in humanitarian aid to North Korea to help it cope with natural disasters, the Interfax news agency cited senior Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev as saying last week. Kim Young-hee, a North Korean defector and an expert on the North Korean economy at Korea Development Bank in Seoul, did not think the memo was asking for food.  “The memo seems like a message saying ‘although UN sanctions do not affect people’s lives directly, they affect the whole economy and people’s livelihoods are getting worse. So wouldn’t it be good if sanctions were eased?’,” she said.

Pyongyang’s special representative for the US arrived in Hanoi yesterday with a North Korean delegation, an AFP reporter and source confirmed, ahead of a summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un next week. Kim Hyok-chol was seen by an AFP reporter walking into a government guesthouse where other North Korean officials in town for pre-summit preparations were staying over the weekend.  He arrived from Beijing, where he spent a night en route from North Korea. “A team of North Koreans arrived on a flight from Beijing,” a source at the airport told AFP, requesting anonymity.  Kim Hyok-chol is expected to meet with his US counterpart Stephen Biegun, who is heading to Hanoi, later in the week to lay the groundwork for talks between Trump and Kim in the Vietnamese capital on February 27-28.  Biegen and Kim Hyok-chol met in Pyongyang earlier this month to hammer out US and North Korean positions on denuclearisation ahead of the much-anticipated meeting.  The summit will be the second face-to-face for Kim and Trump after a summit in Singapore in June that produced a vaguely worded agreement on denuclearisation.  Progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what exactly denuclearisation means. Observers are hoping for more concrete outcomes from the Hanoi summit to avoid it being dismissed as a publicity stunt.  Trump said on Tuesday that while he hoped his next meeting with Kim Jong-un would yield progress, he was also in “no rush” for results. “I’d like to see ultimately denuclearisation of North Korea,” Trump told reporters.  Vietnam is feverishly preparing for the high-profile event, Trump’s second visit to the country and the first for a North Korean leader since Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung travelled to the communist country in 1964. Speculation is swirling that Kim could travel to Vietnam overland via China by train after a North Korean and a Vietnamese team were seen separately surveying roads and rail tracks near the China border with Vietnam.  Kim travelled by air to the summit in Singapore on a plane lent to him by Beijing, but normally travels by armoured train when he visits China.  Officials have remained tight-lipped on summit details, including the agenda and precise venue, though several teams from both sides are already in Hanoi ahead of the meeting.  Kim Jong-un’s de-facto chief of staff Kim Chang-son, dubbed his ‘butler’, was in Hanoi over the weekend to discuss protocol and security matters with the US team.  He was seen at the government guesthouse and the colonial-era, French-built Metropole hotel, both slated as possible venues for the summit, though officials have so far refused to confirm the precise meeting location. Alex Wong, US deputy assistant secretary of state for North Korea, arrived in the Vietnamese capital preparing for the summit earlier this week, while Biegen could arrive today.  A State Department deputy spokesman said the US objectives have not changed since the Singapore summit. “Chairman Kim’s commitment to denuclearisation upon which the world is focused right now and... that remains our goal,” Robert Palladino told reporters.