South Korea asks Trump to lead efforts to resolve tensions with North Korea

SEOUL - South Korean President Lee Jae Myung asked U.S. President Donald Trump to take the lead in seeking a peaceful resolution of tensions with North Korea during a brief exchange at the Group of Seven summit on Tuesday, Lee's office said.

The two leaders greeted each other during a G7 leaders' group photo, presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said, where Trump asked Lee about the current state of relations with North Korea.

Lee asked Trump to lead efforts to resolve the North Korea issue peacefully, as he had done with the war in the Middle East, according to Lee's office. Trump responded that he would work to address the North Korea issue, Kang said.

Trump later expressed willingness to play a role in making progress on issues related to the Korean Peninsula in conversation with Lee, Lee's office said according to Yonhap news agency.

The two leaders discussed ways to expand mutually beneficial cooperation, including in the shipbuilding sector, and shared the view that cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan was important on the basis of the South Korea-U.S. alliance, Yonhap said.

The two leaders also discussed efforts to negotiate an end to the Middle East war and freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, Yonhap said citing Lee's office.

In a joint statement issued on Wednesday following the summit, G7 leaders expressed "deep concern" about North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and reaffirmed their commitment to the "complete denuclearisation of North Korea in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions."

The leaders also urged North Korea to resolve the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang and reiterated the need to jointly address North Korea's cryptocurrency thefts and cybercrimes.

Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held three meetings during Trump's first term, including a landmark summit in Singapore in 2018, a second summit in Hanoi in 2019 and a meeting later that year at the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, where Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to step into North Korea.

The diplomacy collapsed after the Hanoi summit failed to produce an agreement on dismantling North Korea's nuclear programme and easing U.S.-led sanctions.

Trump has repeatedly signalled interest in reviving direct diplomacy with Kim. He said in August 2025 that he looked forward to seeing the North Korean leader "in the appropriate future", and said in October he would "love" to meet Kim again.

Trump last week posted a captionless photo of himself with Kim Jong Un on Truth Social, in an apparent reminder of their past diplomacy.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young on Monday said he viewed the post as a "good signal" that Trump would be willing to focus on a meeting with Kim once the conflict with Iran is resolved, local media reported.

-Reporting by Joyce Lee and Kyu-seok Shim; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Ed Davies and Chizu Nomiyama /Reuters