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Singapore has been confirmed as the location of the historic summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th,” Trump wrote on Twitter on May 10. “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”

While presiding over a meeting of his cabinet on May 9, Trump said that the time and location of the summit had been decided. When asked by reporters whether the meeting might be held at Panmunjeom, he said that was not an option.

Sources say there had been a fierce tug-of-war during recent backroom negotiations, with North Korea strongly pushing to hold the summit in Pyongyang while the US favored Panmunjeom. The two sides appear to have reached an eleventh-hour agreement on the compromise plan of Singapore.

There were reportedly concerns that if the summit were held in Panmunjeom, Trump could have been sandwiched between South and North Korea. Trump may also have concluded that Panmunjeom lacked “novelty” as the site of his summit with Kim, which could prove to be the signature achievement of his presidency, since Panmunjeom was already in the global spotlight during the recent inter-Korean summit.

As a consequence, advisors at the White House have reportedly focused on the argument that Singapore’s neutrality makes it an appropriate site for the summit. Singapore’s advantages include its superb infrastructure in the areas of safety and security, convenience of transportation and mobility, and the press environment.

Graham Ong-Webb, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, told the Straits Times, a local daily newspaper, that Singapore is the ideal place to host the North Korea-US summit because Singapore has never been biased in foreign issues and has served as an effective mediator.

And since Singapore is just six and a half hours away from North Korea by plane, Kim can fly there on his private jet. Other advantages include security and media access.

North Korea’s Rodong Shinmun

Now that Singapore has been tapped as the summit site, the summit is likely to take place at the Shangri-La Hotel, a frequent venue for diplomatic negotiations. The hotel is not only a Singapore landmark but also the site of the Asia Security Summit (also known as the Shangri-La Dialogue), the continent’s largest annual security conference.

The Washington Post pointed out that Singapore has diplomatic relations with North Korea and a North Korean embassy and has frequently and ably carried out “third-country” diplomacy in Asia. It was also at this very hotel that Chinese President Xi Jinping and then-Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou held their own historic first summit in 2015.

While the summit had originally been scheduled for early June, this was eventually changed to June 12, following the G7 summit that will be taking place on June 8 and 9. This change was apparently made in talks during US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s second trip to North Korea.

Pompeo told reporters that accompanied him on the flight from Pyongyang to Yokota Air Base, where US Forces Japan has its headquarters, that the plan is for the summit to last for one day, but that there was a chance to extend it to two days if there were more matters to discuss.

On May 10, Trump visited Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to personally greet three Korean-Americans released from detention in North Korea. During the meeting, he expressed his gratitude to Kim Jong-un for releasing the detainees prior to the summit. When a reporter asked whether Trump would like to visit North Korea someday, Trump said that was a possibility.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]