Trump: Next meeting with North Korea's Kim to be in Hanoi, Vietnam

Feb. 9 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump said he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for a second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Feb. 27 and 28.

Trump announced the meeting location in a tweet Friday night. He previously identified Vietnam as the host country and the specific dates in his State of the Union address earlier this week.

"I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!" Trump tweeted Friday evening.

"North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse," Trump added. "He may surprise some but he won't surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is. North Korea will become a different kind of Rocket - an Economic one!"

Trump said his representatives "very productive meeting" in North Korea led to the second summit.

CNN reported that the choice of venue was a small concession by the United States after two Vietnamese cities, Hanoi and Da Nang, became top contenders for the summit's location. North Korea favored Hanoi because it has an embassy there. But the United States preferred Da Nang because officials previously conducted a full check of that location due to the recent Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit held there.

A few days before the meeting announcement, a confidential United Nations report revealed that the North Korean nuclear and missile program remains intact.

Prior to that, U.S. intelligence officials warned that North Korea is unwilling to relinquish all of its nuclear stockpile despite Trump's efforts to negotiate denuclearization.

Still, Trump said in his State of the Union Tuesday that there had been "bold new diplomacy." He mentioned in the speech that he would be meeting Kim in Vietnam

"As part of a bold new diplomacy, we continue our historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula," Trump said. "Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in 15 months. If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed."

Trump and Kim held their first summit in Singapore last June. They said in a joint statement at the time that they were committed to developing new relations to promote peace.