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Luxury hotels, a private dinner, and a possible trip to an Instagram beauty spot: Here's how Trump's second summit with Kim Jong Un is scheduled to go down

Feb 26, 2019, 17:54 IST

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Reuters

  • President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, this week.
  • The leaders are booked in for a series of meetings, photo ops, and a private dinner.
  • Kim may also visit a mausoleum in Hanoi and an Instagram-famous bay popular with tourists.
  • Take a look at the two leaders' schedules below.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump are set to meet for a second time this week, during which Trump hopes to push Kim toward denuclearizing his country.

They are due to meet in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Wednesday and Thursday. Kim arrived in the city on Tuesday afternoon local time, a few hours ahead of Trump's scheduled landing.

Here's what the two leaders are scheduled to do during their visit. All times are in local time for Vietnam.

Tuesday morning: Kim arrives in Vietnam

Kim's notoriously slow, personal armored train pulled into the Vietnamese border city of Dong Dang around 8:10 a.m. Tuesday, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

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He then traveled to Hanoi by car.

According to The New York Times, Kim likely traveled through northern Vietnamese provinces, like Bac Giang, where hundreds of North Korean Air Force officers were deployed during the Vietnam War, in a show of goodwill between the two nations. Some North Korean officers' graves are there.

North Korean bodyguards run along a limousine transporting North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un upon his arrival at the border town with China in Dong Dang, Vietnam, February 26, 2019.REUTERS/ Stringer

Tuesday afternoon: Kim arrives in Hanoi and boots out all the journalists from his hotel

Kim's motorcade - complete with his bodyguards who run alongside his car - was photographed in the city center on Tuesday afternoon.

Read more: US news reporters were abruptly kicked out of Kim Jong Un's hotel in Vietnam

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He was booked into the Meliá Hanoi, a five-star hotel in downtown Hanoi. Journalists who had arrived days before Kim and staged their equipment at the hotel's media center were abruptly given one hour to relocate, reportedly because Kim didn't want to share a hotel with American journalists.

President Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One for a trip to Vietnam to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Monday, Feb. 25, 2019, in Andrews Air Force Base, Md. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)Associated Press

Tuesday night: Trump touches down

Trump is due to arrive at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport at 9:15 p.m., and depart ten minutes later, according to the White House.

He will then travel for half an hour to his destination for the night. It's not clear where Trump will stay.

The US president is traveling with officials including White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, social media director Dan Scavino, and senior advisor Stephen Miller.

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Wednesday morning: Trump hammers out some trade deals with Vietnam first

At 11 a.m. Trump is expected to meet Vietnam's President Nguyen, take part in bilateral talks with a Vietnamese delegation, and sign some trade deals, according to White House pool reporters. Details of the deals are not clear.

Trump is then scheduled to meet Vietnam's prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, for a working lunch and more bilateral meetings.

This combination of pictures created on November 12, 2018 shows North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un(L) during the Inter-Korean summit in the Peace House building on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom on April 27, 2018, and US President Donald Trump during a post-election press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on November 7, 2018. - North Korea is operating at least 13 undeclared bases to hide mobile, nuclear-capable missiles, a new study released November 12, 2018 has found, raising fresh doubts over US President Donald Trump's signature foreign policy initiative. Trump has hailed his July summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as having opened the way to denuclearization of the divided peninsula, defusing tensions that less than a year ago brought the two countries to the brink of conflict.KOREA SUMMIT PRESS POOL,MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Wednesday night: Trump and Kim meet for the first time in Vietnam

The two leaders will meet for the first time since their June 2018 summit in Singapore on Wednesday evening.

They plan to speak one-on-one - likely with translators - before moving onto a private "social dinner," White House pool reporters said.

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Trump will bring Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the dinner. Pompeo met Kim on his own several times while laying the ground for the first summit.

Kim will reportedly bring Kim Yong Chol, a key North Korean negotiator with the US, and an as-yet unknown third person.

The unknown third dinner guest could be Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un. Kim Yo Jong accompanied her brother to the first Trump summit last year, and was seen holding a crystal ash tray for him during a brief stop during their train ride from China.

Read more: Meet North Korea's most powerful woman, Kim Yo Jong - Kim Jong Un's 30-ish sister who played a key role in the first summit with Trump

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Japanese TV cameras filmed Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, carrying a crystal ash tray for her brother to stub out his cigarette in.AP/YouTube

Thursday: As many as four more meetings

Neither the US nor North Korean side has released a schedule for Thursday.

But according to Yonhap, Trump and Kim may meet for a total of five times during their trip - which would mean as many as four meetings on Thursday alone.

After a formal lunch last year in Singapore the two leaders unexpectedly took a stroll along a hotel courtyard, and Trump showed Kim his presidential car, also known as "The Beast."

Only nine months before that, Trump had threatened to unleash "fire and fury" onto North Korea, and Kim called Trump a "dotard."

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Associated Press

Trump has played down hopes for a breakthrough in the Hanoi summit, which he has characterized as a follow-up to last year's summit where Kim vaguely pledged to work toward denuclearization.

So far, not much progress has been made on that end, and US intelligence has warned that North Korea would probably not give up its nuclear arms, much to Trump's ire.

Read more: 'Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!': Trump lashes out at his intel chiefs after they contradict his views on global threats

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un arrives at the Dong Dang railway station, Vietnam, at the border with China, February 26, 2019.REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

Thursday to Sunday: Talk of a trip to the mausoleum and an Instagram-famous bay

Kim is likely to stay in Hanoi through Sunday, Yonhap reported, citing the Meliá hotel's notice that it would conduct enhanced security measures until then.

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During his trip he may tour the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, which is located a few blocks from the North Korean embassy, both Yonhap and The New York Times reported. Ho was a Communist revolutionary who led Vietnam's fight for independence from France in 1945.

Soldiers at a wreath-laying ceremony attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, in November 2015.Kham/Reuters

He may also visit Halong Bay, a picturesque, Instagram-famous tourist destination about 100 miles from Hanoi. A senior North Korean official went there during a visit to Vietnam last week, the Times reported.

Wikimedia Commons

Here is a recent photo tagged there on Instagram. Hundreds more like it are on the site.

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One reason for Kim's visits to Ho's mausoleum and Halong Bay could be to bring himself closer to his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea.

Kim senior met Ho in Vietnam decades ago, and also visited Halong Bay in 1964.

Since becoming North Korea's leader in 2011, Kim Jong Un has been trying to emulate his grandfather, and even changed his hairstyle to look like him.

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