Kim's Letter to Trump Contains an ‘Interesting’ Bit, Moon Says

(Bloomberg) -- The letter that U.S. President Donald Trump received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un includes an “interesting part” that he can’t disclose, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said.

“Trump didn’t make this part of letter public, so it’s not my place to make public,” Moon said at a press briefing in Oslo during a state visit.

Moon said he was willing to meet with the North Korean leader “any time, any place” and that he wants to connect with Kim before Trump comes to Seoul later this month after a G-20 meeting in Japan.

On Wednesday, Moon said that it was important that Trump and Kim meet in the “near future” as the letters are keeping up momentum for dialog.

Trump on Tuesday complimented Kim for sending him a “warm” letter while also saying he wouldn’t have allowed the CIA to recruit the dictator’s slain brother as an intelligence asset.

While he said he’s not yet ready to meet with the North Korean leader for what would be a third time, his remarks show that he’s trying to keep the dialog open. Contact between the two sides has been limited since February, when talks ground to a halt at a summit in Hanoi without a deal or any substantial progress toward stripping Kim’s regime of its nuclear weapons program.

Trump said talks between U.S. and North Korean nuclear negotiators need to advance before another meeting.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sveinung Sleire in Oslo at ssleire1@bloomberg.net;Jihye Lee in Seoul at jlee2352@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonas Bergman at jbergman@bloomberg.net

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