South Korea’s president says Trump wants to address North Korea after the Iran accord, calling sanctions ineffective.
SEOUL: Donald Trump wants to turn his attention to North Korea now that he has an accord with Iran, South Korea’s president said Friday after meeting his US counterpart in France.
Lee Jae Myung also said he told Trump that sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its nuclear programme were “ineffective”.
Trump and Lee met over dinner during a G7 summit in Evian this week.
While in France, the American leader also signed a deal aimed at ending the war in the Middle East.
“President Trump said that the time had come to pay attention to the North Korea issue,” Lee told reporters in Seoul.
“I told him sanctions and pressure (against the North) are ineffective,” the South Korean leader said.
“The effectiveness of sanctions has diminished due to military cooperation between North Korea and Russia stemming from the war in Ukraine,” he added.
“Even a small amount of assistance from Russia is of great help to North Korea.”
Hours after announcing an agreement with Iran, Trump took to social media to post an uncaptioned photograph of himself with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, taken when they met in Singapore in 2018.
This fuelled speculation that the Trump administration could next shift its focus to nuclear-armed North Korea.
The two Koreas remain technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, and are separated by a demilitarised zone through which the border runs.
