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US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have reportedly entered the final phase of negotiations over the location of the first ever North Korea-US summit to be held this month, with Panmunjeom and Pyongyang as the final candidates.

“The US is currently pushing for Panmunjeom and North Korea for Pyongyang as the site of the summit,” a source in Washington who is familiar with developments concerning the summit said on Apr. 30.

“A few days ago, President Trump said that the candidates for the North Korea-US summit had been narrowed down to two, but North Korea and the US were already talking about Panmunjeom and Pyongyang two weeks before he made those remarks,” the source said.

This means that, though the American press has been mentioning countries such as Singapore and Mongolia as likely sites for the summit, no “third country” other than Panmunjeom had been on the list for quite some time.

Amid these developments, Trump has been openly pushing for Panmunjeom. On Apr. 30, Trump wrote on Twitter, “[W]ould Peace House/Freedom House, on the Border of North & South Korea, be a more Representative, Important and Lasting site than a third party country? Just asking!”

The list of possible sites for the North Korea-US Summit scheduled for this month has been narrowed down to Pyongyang (above) and Panmunjeom (below). (By Baek So-ah

During a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari at the White House, Trump responded to a question about the possibility of holding the summit in the DMZ: "Some people don't like the look of that, some people like that very much. [. . .] There's something I like about it because [. . .] you're actually there where if things work out there's a great celebration to be had on the site not in a third party country."

But in the view of a diplomatic source in Washington D.C., who asked to remain anonymous, Trump’s last-minute push for Panmunjeom is “a negotiating strategy aimed at gaining more concessions about denuclearization from North Korea,” which strongly prefers holding the summit in Pyongyang.

In relation to this, White House National Security Advisor John Bolton said during an appearance on Fox News on Apr. 29 that “if, in fact, Kim has made a strategic decision to give up his entire nuclear weapons program, then I think deciding on the place and the date should be fairly easy.”

This is thought to imply that the US is willing to hold the summit in Pyongyang if North Korea will make enough concessions on the scope and timeframe of denuclearization to offset domestic criticism about Trump visiting Pyongyang.

Trump may be weighing the dramatic and historic impact of an American president choosing to visit Pyongyang, which would be on par with US President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972. At the height of the Cold War and in the middle of China’s Cultural Revolution, Nixon visited the Chinese capital of Beijing and met Chairman Mao Zedong, bringing about a dramatic rapprochement with China and upending the Cold War order.

In the same way, it would be a momentous occasion in world history for Trump to visit the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and meet with Kim Jong-un, considering that the US and North Korea were until recently exchanging threats about nuclear weapons and missiles.

Recent movements by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of Trump’s most trusted advisors and the man in charge of preparing for the North Korea-US summit, are reminiscent of former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who orchestrated Nixon’s visit to China. In July 1971, Kissinger paid a top-secret visit to Beijing, where he and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai agreed on the principle of normalizing US-China relations. This in turn laid the groundwork for Nixon’s visit to China and for the two countries’ rapprochement.