United States President Donald Trump was welcomed to South Korea by its president – and one of the country’s most popular K-pop bands.
Donald Trump touched down South Korea Saturday following the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan and said he will visit the heavily-fortified demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea.
But before that, Donald Trump was treated with some K-pop diplomacy. After meeting with President Moon Jae-in at the Blue House, he was greeted by EXO, a pop group whose members gave the president a book.
Turning a lot of eyebrows, the group also gave a signed copy of their album to White House adviser Ivanka Trump and chatted with the president’s son in law Jared Kushner.
This wasn’t the first time that Donald Trump’s daughter met the group. Harry Harris, United States ambassador to South Korea, shared a group picture from Saturday, adding that the first time she met the group was during the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.
Donald Trump floated the likelihood of meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his visit to the DMZ, a trip he unexpectedly announced on Friday.
“After some very important meetings, including my meeting with President Xi of China, I will be leaving Japan for South Korea (with President Moon). While there, if Chairman Kim of North Korea sees this, I would meet him at the Border/DMZ just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!” he wrote in a tweet.
During a press conference in Japan earlier today, Donald Trump said that he would be “very comfortable” to cross into North Korea after the meeting with Kim, a move which would make him the first United States president to cross the border while he’s at the DMZ.
He said his offer to meet Kim was a “feeler” and was a spontaneous plan who recently came up with.
“I just put out a feeler, because I don’t know where he is right now, he may not be in North Korea,” Trump told reporters.
“We may be meeting with Chairman Kim. We get along. There’ve been no nuclear tests, no long-range nuclear tests and they returned our hostages,” he added.