Donald Trump has said he wants to meet Kim Jong Un during a trip to Asia

Donald Trump said he would like to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his upcoming trip to Asia.

“I would. If you want to have a say, I’m open to it,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One as he departed for the region, adding that he “had a great relationship” with Kim.

Trump made history during his first term by becoming the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea when they last shook hands in 2019.

His trip to Malaysia and Japan will see him meet a number of world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, amid trade talks sparked by Trump’s imposition of heavy tariffs earlier this year.

Trump took an atypical approach to North Korea – a secretive communist totalitarian state largely isolated on the world stage – and its attempts to develop nuclear weapons, initially calling Kim a “little rocket man”.

The two met face-to-face three times during Trump’s previous tenure in the White House, but failed to agree on a denuclearization program. Since then, North Korea has conducted multiple ICBM tests, its neighbors say.

Asked if he would recognize North Korea as a nuclear state, Trump told reporters late Thursday: “I think they are sort of a nuclear power … They have a lot of nuclear weapons, I will say that.”

Kim said he was willing to meet Trump again provided the US stopped following through on its “absurd” demand that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons.

“I still have a good memory of President Trump,” Kim said in a speech last month, according to state media.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-yong, who is in charge of North-South relations, said there was a “significant” chance the two leaders could meet while Trump is in South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, according to the AFP news agency.

A senior US official told reporters that a meeting was not on Trump’s schedule, according to the Anadolu Agency – although their latest meeting at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas comes after an invitation from Trump on social media.

Trump’s first stop will be in Malaysia, where he will attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.

He is expected to land in the South Korean city of Busan on Wednesday ahead of the APEC summit.

He will meet with South Korean leader Lee Jae-myung, who discussed peace on the Korean peninsula and the possibility of a Trump-Kim meeting during his visit to the White House in August.

Lee told the BBC he was open to a deal between Trump and Kim in which North Korea agreed to freeze production of its nuclear weapons.

Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi comes amid a trade war between the two nations.

The two agreed to hold off on the triple-digit tariffs threatened against each other as they seek a trade deal — but that thaw is in jeopardy after Trump said he would impose a 100 percent trade tax on Chinese goods over Beijing’s restrictions on rare-earth exports.

The minerals are essential for many electronics, and China is currently responsible for about 90% of exports in their refined form.