Kim Jong-un accepts invitation to White House as Trump says 'no more nuclear threat'

North Korea basked on Wednesday in the performance of its leader Kim Jong-un at the historic summit with Donald Trump, as America's allies expressed concern at his decision to halt "war games" in the region.

The North's state media framed Tuesday's summit in Singapore as a win for Pyongyang, dubbing it "the meeting of the century" on the front page of its official party newspaper.

The series of photos showed something North Koreans never would have imagined just months ago - their leader warmly shaking hands with the US President.

The priority treatment of what even Pyongyang was calling a "historic" meeting underscores just how much of a propaganda coup the North saw in the meeting.

Pyongyang's first reports stressed to the North Korean people that Mr Trump agreed at Mr Kim's demand to halt joint military exercises with South Korea as long as talks toward easing tensions continue and suggested that Mr Trump also said he would lift sanctions as negations progressed.

"President Trump appreciated that an atmosphere of peace and stability was created on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, although distressed with the extreme danger of armed clash only a few months ago, thanks to the proactive peace-loving measures taken by the respected Supreme Leader from the outset of this year," said a summary of the leaders' summit by the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency.

In the first ever meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader, Mr Trump and Mr Kim signed a joint statement agreeing to work toward a denuclearised Korean Peninsula, although the timeline and tactics were left unclear. 

Mr Trump later promised to end "war games" with ally South Korea, a concession to Mr Kim that appeared to catch the Pentagon and Seoul government off guard and sowed confusion among Mr Trump's Republican supporters in Washington.

North Korea's state media said ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons was dependent on Washington and Pyongyang ceasing moves that antagonise each other.

"Kim Jong-un said in order to achieve peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and realise its denuclearisation, the two countries should commit themselves to refraining from antagonising... each other out of mutual understanding," KCNA reported.

There was little else mention of denuclearisation of North Korea in the statement, which mainly focused on stopping hostilities between North Korea and the United States.

Video: The meaning behind the leaders' body language

Critics in the United States said Mr Trump had given away too much at a meeting that provided international standing to Mr Kim. The North Korean leader is isolated, his country accused by rights groups of widespread human rights abuses and under UN sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

If implemented, the halting of the joint military exercises would be one of the most controversial moves to come from the summit. The drills help keep US forces at a state of readiness in one of the world's most tense flashpoints.

"We will be stopping the war games which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money, plus I think it's very provocative," Mr Trump said.

His announcement was a surprise even to President Moon Jae-in's government in Seoul, which worked in recent months to help bring about the Trump-Kim summit.

The presidential Blue House said it needed "to find out the precise meaning or intentions" of Mr Trump's statement, while adding it was willing to "explore various measures to help the talks move forward more smoothly."

Japan said the drills were "vital" for regional security.

"The drills and the US military stationed in South Korea play a vital role in East Asia's security," Japan's defence minister Itsunori Onodera said when asked about Trump's surprise announcement.

"I hope to share this recognition between Japan and the US, or among Japan, US and South Korea," he told reporters.

Mr Onodera said Japan's policy remained unchanged after the Trump-Kim summit.

"There is no change in our policy of putting pressure" on North Korea, he said, adding that Japan wanted concrete action from the North over its nuclear and missile ambitions, as well as on the issue of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang decades ago.

Yoji Koda, a retired admiral who commanded the Japanese naval fleet, said ending the exercises would be a "clear mistake" and was "too early."

"Alliances are a key element of U.S. global strategy and exercises are a right of the U.S. to use to protect allied nations," he told the Asahi newspaper. "The US should continue joint exercises, they are a signal to China too."

China said on Wednesday that it supported Mr Trump's announcement that the US would halt war games, adding that it shows China's "dual suspension" proposal is practical.

Beijing has proposed what it calls a dual suspension, whereby North Korea suspends nuclear and missile tests, and South Korea and the US suspend military drills so they can sit down for talks. 

Photographs of the leaders crowded the first half of Wednesday's six-page Rodong Sinmun newspaper, featuring the two shaking hands, sitting together and walking alongside each other at the summit venue in Singapore.

Other pages showed US and North Korean officials having their extended meeting, a working lunch and later, Trump and Kim signing a joint agreement that marked the end to the summit.

"North Korea seems to be highlighting this as one of Kim Jong-un's greatest feats yet and lauding itself for keeping the North Korean regime from collapsing while succeeding in shaking up the U.S.-South Korean alliance," said Moon Seong-mook, a former South Korean military official and current head of the Unification Strategy Centre in Seoul.

"For North Korea, they got exactly what they wanted. They had a summit as a nuclear state with Kim on equal turf with Trump, got the United States to halt joint military exercises with South Korea. It's a win for Kim Jong Un,"  MrMoon said.

There was some confusion in the US over precisely what military cooperation Mr Trump had promised to halt.

US Senator Cory Gardner told reporters that Vice President Mike Pence promised in a briefing for Republican senators that the Trump administration would "clarify what the president talked about" regarding joint military exercises.

"VP was very clear: regular readiness training and training exchanges will continue ... war games will not," Gardner later wrote on Twitter.

Pentagon officials were not immediately able to provide any details about Mr Trump’s remarks about suspending drills, a step the US military has long resisted.

One South Korean official said he initially thought Mr Trump had misspoken.

"I was shocked when he called the exercises 'provocative,' a very unlikely word to be used by a US president," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Current and former US defence officials expressed concern at the possibility the United States would unilaterally halt military exercises without an explicit concession from North Korea that lowers the threat from Pyongyang.