US President Donald Trump has said his country has a very good relationship with North Korea, foreign media reported, after Pyongyang fired two projectiles believed to be short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on Saturday.
"Kim Jong-un has been, you know, pretty straight with me,"
Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday (Washington time), according to a video released by the cable channel C-Span.
"He likes testing missiles, but we never restricted short-range missiles. We'll see what happens," he said before departing for the Group of Seven talks in France. "Many nations test those missiles. We tested a very big one the other day as you probably noticed."
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(AP) |
Trump has downplayed the North's recent missile tests as "very standard" and insisted they do not break the North Korean leader Kim's promise to refrain from nuclear or long-range missile tests.
Saturday's launch marked the seventh such event since late July.
Earlier this month, Trump said Kim had sent him a letter expressing a "small apology" for testing the short-range missiles and that Kim told him such saber-rattling would stop when the joint exercise between South Korea and the United States is over.
The allies' combined training ended Tuesday.
The negotiations on the North's nuclear weapons program have been stalled since the no-deal Hanoi summit between Trump and Kim in February.
The two leaders agreed to resume nuclear talks during their surprise meeting at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in late June, but they have not taken place yet.
