President Trump on Friday said North Korea has already started returning the remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the decades-old Korean war.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy on the White House lawn, Trump said that he asked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their summit talks on Tuesday to return the remains of U.S. troops killed in the country.
“I asked him, the remains, I’d like to get them. He said ‘yes, we will do that,’ ” Trump said. “They are already starting to produce the remains of these great young soldiers who were left in North Korea.”
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The fighting in the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, but the war is still technically ongoing, because a peace treaty was never signed.
The U.S. fought alongside South Korean forces in that conflict and the Defense Department estimates that there are 7,697 American soldiers who are still unaccounted for.
Trump met this week with Kim in Singapore on Tuesday, marking the first such encounter between a sitting U.S. president and North Korean leader in history.
The U.S. president praised Kim after that summit, calling him “a very worthy, very smart negotiator,” and the two signed a brief document committing the U.S. to unspecified security guarantees for the North in exchange for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Some have raised questions about the agreement struck by Trump and Kim, because of its lack of specifics in addressing the North’s denuclearization.