North Korea denies Kim talks as Trump eyes meeting this year

Se Young Lee and Tyler Kendall, Bloomberg News on Aug 19, 2026

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North Korea denied any direct communication between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump even as the U.S. president said he’s seeking to meet with the strongman this year.

“The relationship between the two leaders remains excellent,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the North Korean leader, said in a statement issued through state media KCNA. “However, the U.S.’s hostile policies toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea haven’t changed.”

The North Korean statement followed Trump’s claim on Monday that Kim Jong Un had responded to requests for the two leaders to have a conversation.

Asked later on Wednesday whether he had exchanged letters with Kim Jong Un, Trump refused to answer but insisted that they get along “very well.” Trump said, “yeah, I will be” in response to a reporter who asked whether he expects to meet the North Korean leader this year.

The exchange highlighted the gulf between Trump’s stated desire to rekindle his relationship with Kim Jong Un, which dates back to his first term, and the North Koreans’ willingness to engage.

North Korea also dismissed Trump’s decision to scale down joint military drills with South Korea, saying that Washington’s stance toward Pyongyang remained antagonistic.

“Regarding the U.S. president’s sudden announcement of the scaling down of the U.S.-South Korea joint military drills, we are uninterested and don’t think the decision is even worth commenting on,” Kim Yo Jong said in Wednesday’s statement, adding that any reduction in scale or duration did not change what she called the provocative and aggressive nature of the drills.

Trump now finds himself in a position where he’s antagonized a longtime U.S. ally in South Korea while apparently failing to achieve any diplomatic traction with a top U.S. adversary.

“If the U.S. side is trying to tout its decision as some kind of an ‘act of goodwill,’ they will not get the response that they want,” Kim said in her statement, published in Korean.

Despite being blindsided by Trump’s unilateral decision to curtail the joint drills, South Korea sought to keep the momentum for dialogue alive.

“We share President Trump’s determination and efforts to create conditions for dialogue aimed at establishing a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, even by scaling back the South Korea-U.S. joint exercises and field training, and we commend him for the decision,” South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung said in an X post.

Trump projected confidence that he could mitigate any North Korean threat, saying, “as long as we have a smart president, he’s going to be fine.”

The U.S. president on Sunday ordered the Pentagon to curb military exercises with South Korea, citing the long-time ally’s lack of support for the ongoing war in Iran and because the drills sent an “inappropriate signal” toward North Korea.

Trump met with Kim Jong Un three times during his first term, but the talks didn’t produce any diplomatic breakthrough. The U.S. president has nonetheless repeatedly touted his good relations with the North Korean leader.

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(With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron, Courtney Subramanian, Soo-Hyang Choi and Paul Jackson.)