Kim Jong Un to travel to Vietnam by train for summit with Trump
HANOI: Vietnam is preparing for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to arrive by train for his summit in Hanoi next week with U.S. President Donald Trump, two sources with direct knowledge of security and logistics planning told Reuters on Wednesday.
It could take Kim at least two and a half days to travel the thousands of kilometres through China by train, from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to Vietnam, meaning he would have to set off later this week in time for his planned Feb. 25 arrival.
Kim's train will stop at the Vietnamese border station of Dong Dang, where he will disembark and drive 170 km (105 miles) to Hanoi by car, the sources said.
Trump and Kim will meet in the Vietnamese capital on Feb. 27-28, eight months after a historic summit in Singapore in June - the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader - at which they pledged to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
Negotiations have made little headway since then and there is growing expectation that this time they need to reach a more specific agreement.
Separately, three other sources with direct knowledge of the summit preparations told Reuters the preferred location for the meeting between the leaders is the Government Guesthouse, a colonial-era government building in central Hanoi.
All five sources who spoke to Reuters said the plans were subject to change. The sources were not authorised to speak to the media because of the sensitivities surround the secretive North Korean leader's travel plans.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told the summit organising committee on Tuesday that security during the summit was "top priority", Vietnam's government said on its website on Wednesday.
The Metropole Hotel, opposite the Government Guesthouse, will be a backup location for the summit, two of the sources said.
On Saturday, a Reuters witness saw Kim Jong Un's close aide, Kim Chang Son, visiting the Government Guesthouse and the Metropole and
Melia hotels in the centre of
the capital.
