Days before a second U.S.-North Korea summit, much rests on the shoulders of a former auto executive trying to find common ground between an American president seeking a big foreign policy win and a North Korean leader who seems unlikely to hand him one.
Stephen Biegun, named Donald Trump's special envoy for North Korea six months ago, flew to Hanoi ahead of this week's meeting in the Vietnamese capital where Trump hopes to get closer to his goal of persuading Pyongyang to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.
In meetings with his North Korean counterpart, Biegun, a 55-year-old former Ford Motor Co. executive, aims to hammer out a joint summit statement showing concrete progress beyond vague commitments agreed to by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their first meeting in June.