US President Donald Trump may have become the first sitting US president to set foot in North Korea when he met leader Kim Jong-un in the Demilitarised Zone but critics back home have slammed the meeting for lacking substance and elevating a ruthless dictator.
The meeting, initiated by a spur-of-the-moment tweet by Trump that Kim said took him by surprise, once again displayed the rapport between the two.
As he left South Korea on his flight to Washington, Trump tweeted that he had "a wonderful meeting" with Kim. "Stood on the soil of North Korea, an important statement for all, and a great honor!"
Trump had predicted the two would greet one another for about "two minutes," but they ended up spending more than an hour together.
But they are no closer to narrowing the gap between their positions since they walked away from their summit in February in Vietnam although they agreed to resume stalled nuclear talks.
The meeting, at Trump's last-minute invitation, drew praise from some including Pope Francis as a step towards peace.
Critics, in particular 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, called it a publicity stunt and said Trump wasted an important symbolic move when there has been little sign that North Korea has taken meaningful steps toward denuclearisation.
"Our President shouldn't be squandering American influence on photo ops and exchanging love letters with a ruthless dictator," US Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a Twitter post.
Her 2020 rival and US Senate colleague Bernie Sanders did not fault Trump for meeting with Kim.
"But I don't want it simply to be a photo opportunity, the whole world's media was attracted there," Sanders said. "What's going to happen tomorrow and the next day?"
"Whether it's [Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman] in Saudi Arabia, whether it's Kim Jong-un. You don't have to say positive things about brutal dictators," Sanders said, according to news website Axios.
Senator Amy Klobuchar said on CBS that while the US wants the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, "it's not as easy as just going and bringing a hot dish over the fence to the dictator next door".
While there is nothing wrong with talking to adversaries, Democratic candidate Julian Castro said, Trump has raised the profile of a dictator by meeting with Kim three times now with nothing to show for it.
Castro, US housing secretary under president Barack Obama, told ABC it's "worrisome that this president erratically sets up a meeting without the staff work being done. It seems like it's all for show, not substantive."
