Trump 'kissed Melania goodbye' before aborted effort to visit Kim Jong-un: 'I might not see you again'
President Donald J Trump reportedly believed that he might not come back to his home country before attempting to visit North Korea in 2017, according to Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book ‘Rage’ as reported by the South Korean state-run Yonhap News Agency.
At the time, the president was also worried about whether the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) knew of his visit. "I got up this morning, and told Melania, kissed her goodbye, and said, 'I might not see you again.' It's not that I'm worried about myself," Trump reportedly told people who were with him in the helicopter during their visit to Pyongyang. "If something were to happen to the president of the United States, it would be the worst thing that could happen to us as a country," he had added.
"They know I'm coming, don't they?" The POTUS had also asked at the time, to which retired General Vincent Brooks, who was then serving as the commander of US Forces Korea, said that no intelligence confirmed that North Korea knew about his visit. However, due to bad weather, the plan was eventually dropped. Woodward has reportedly written in his book that the pilot had to abort the trip since the weather never cleared.
According to reports, Trump’s November 2017 covert visit to North Korea was a part of a 12-day tour of Asia at the peak of tension between Trump and Kim Jong-un. Their South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, was expected to join both leaders in the DMZ. But the South Korean president also had to cancel it. "I know you guys have got to make the decision. You've got to make a safety decision. This is going to make us look weak,” Trump reportedly said before returning back to the base because of safety reasons.
However, in June 2019, the Republican leader became the first sitting US president to visit North Korea. He met Kim in the DMZ, who told Trump at the time: “I never expected to meet you in this place.” Trump also sent a letter to him in July that year in which he wrote: "It was an honor to cross into your country and to resume our important discussion.”
This revelation from the book came after another report stated that Trump told Woodward that Kim said to him that he “killed his uncle” and put his head on display for the officials of North Korea. Jang Song-thaek was the uncle of Kim and also a powerful man within the regime, who was killed in December 2013. “Kim tells me everything. Told me everything. He killed his uncle and he put the body right in the steps. And the head was cut, sitting on the chest,” Trump told the Washington Post journalist, according to his book ‘Rage’.
Woodward has also claimed that Trump and Kim have exchanged a number of letters, out of which he got access to 27. He stated that the letters are filled with “declarations of personal fealty that might be uttered by the Knights of the Round Table, or perhaps suitors.” Kim wrote his first letter to Trump in December 2018, in which he addressed Trump as “Your Excellency”. The letter that mentioned their meeting at the “historic DPRK-US summit in Singapore” stated, “Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency's hand at that beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.”