Trump calls off North Korea summit but keeps door open for future talks

President Donald Trump said the U.S. is walking away from a planned June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un because of "open hostility" in Kim's most recent statement.

The public letter addressed to the North Korean regime was released Thursday by the White House.

"Sadly based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting," said Trump.

Trump said in the letter, and in a subsequent address at the White House, that he still looked forward to meeting Kim one day but expressed regret that a "wonderful dialogue" had taken a turn.

"The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth," the president said.

Trump said he believed "Kim Jong-un wants to do what's right" in response to a reporter's question, but said earlier that the U.S. will continue its campaign of maximum pressure to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

'We have to get it right'

Trump said he had informed the Pentagon and allies South Korea and Japan of his decision.

The president said he hoped North Korea would re-engage in constructive dialogue but that the U.S. military was "more than ready" to respond to any reckless actions.

"Nobody should be anxious, but we have to get it right," he said.

A sitting U.S. president has never met face to face with the three members of the Kim family who have ruled North Korea for several decades, but hopes sprung up after a surprising chain of events in recent weeks.

The response from the Americans comes as North Korea claimed on Thursday to have demolished its sole nuclear test site before a gathering of select foreign journalists, though not international inspectors.

In recent days, however, North Korea had dialled up its rhetoric, focusing on comments made by U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser John Bolton in interviews.

The North Korean government referred to Pence as a "political dummy" and said it was just as ready to meet in a nuclear confrontation as at the negotiating table. Bolton's comments were poorly received as he compared North Korea to Libya, where dictator Moammar Gadhafi was ultimately killed sometime after halting his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, while in his previous capacity as CIA director, has met with Kim. But doubts began to emerge that the summit between Trump and Kim would come off as early as last week, when North Korea called off planned talks with South Korea, which has been mediating between the two countries.

Pompeo read Trump's letter in its entirety Thursday as the Senate's foreign relations committee hearing got underway on Capitol Hill.

In the letter, Trump, as he has in the past, boasted about the "massive and powerful" nuclear capabilities of the U.S.

"I pray to God they will never have to be used," Trump wrote.

Trump hinted on Tuesday while meeting with South Korea President Moon Jae-in at the White House that there was "a very substantial chance" the summit, which was to be held in Singapore, would not happen.

Robert Kelly, a professor of international relations in South Korea, said the North Koreans are "so mercurial" that it's hard to know how they will respond.

"The North Koreans just don't take very well to being called out in public and that's what this was," he told CBC News Network's Andrew Nichols.

Kelly said more diplomacy is required all around and that the South Korean president in particular will need to do a lot of work to try and get a summit back on track.

South Korea questions 'Trump's intention'

Moon was said Thursday to be convening a meeting of his cabinet in response to Trump's letter.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency quoted a presidential office spokesman as saying they "are trying to figure out what President Trump's intention is and the exact meaning of it," leaving open to question whether the Moon government was forewarned about the letter.

Pompeo told the U.S. senators that the administration and South Korea were in "lockstep" with respect to the decision, but said he didn't want to specify which countries were notified ahead of time.

Relations between the Koreas had thawed this year, beginning with North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in February, and including a summit on April 27, in which Kim became the first North Korean dictator to set foot in the South.

Trump suggested this week that recent meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kim may have played a part in stalling momentum for the summit.

"President Xi is a world-class poker player," Trump said.

China publicly supported the planned summit, and Pompeo told the committee that just Wednesday China's foreign ministry told the U.S. that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was in its interests.

Pompeo said in testimony on Thursday that a U.S. team was "fully engaged" and ready for Singapore but received no responses from North Korea on outreach for summit planning.

"I regret the statements that North Koreans have made over the past few days and the fact that we have not been able to conduct the preparation between our two teams that would be necessary to have a chance for successful summit," he said.

Pompeo had recently helped broker the return of three Americans who had been detained in North Korea.

Bellicose threats last year

Trump had agreed to a summit, hastily, some analysts argued, in March after meeting with South Korean officials at the White House. He then confirmed the selection of Singapore as a site on May 10.

Democratic congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer were quick to pounce on the cancellation, with Pelosi telling reporters that Kim emerges as "the big winner" for having fooled Trump, and Schumer suggesting on social media that the summit was doomed to fail.

Late last year, Trump and Kim were exchanging a series of insults, derisive nicknames and nuclear threats after North Korea's progressive series of ballistic missile tests conducted over a period of months.

In September 2017, Trump said in a speech at the United Nations that "Rocket Man" was on a "suicide mission," one month after making the so-called "fire and fury" threat. Kim, for his part, referred to the U.S. president as a "dotard" soon after Trump's UN address.