North Korea said Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump had told leader Kim Jong Un that he intended to halt joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises and ease crippling sanctions against Pyongyang, suggesting via state media that the American leader had explicitly acceded to two of the nuclear-armed nation's top goals during an "epoch-making" summit a day earlier.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim as saying that if the United States were to take "genuine measures for building trust," the North, too, could "continue to take additional good-will measures ... commensurate with them." The statement made clear that Pyongyang was expecting U.S. concessions before any moves by the North.
At a news conference Tuesday following the summit, Trump said that as long as talks with the North were continuing, the U.S. would not carry out the joint exercises — which he called "war games," labeling them "provocative" and saying that the decision would save "a tremendous amount of money."