Trump wants to turn attention to North Korean nuclear programme after Iran, says South Korea's Lee

Following a memorandum of understanding signed by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, the war between US and Iran that began with a joint airstrike (US, Israel) on Iran on February 28 has come to an end, which gives Trump the opportunity to shift his focus to North Korea’s nuclear programme, according to South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung.

In a press conference Lee Jae Myung said that Trump during a meeting at a G7 dinner said that “the time had come to pay attention to the North Korea issue,” renewing focus on Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities.

He also said that during his conversation he told Trump that sanctions against North Korea were “ineffective”, given the growing military cooperation between South Korea and Russia.

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Urging Trump to focus first on freezing Pyongyang's weapons development he said, “Even a small amount of assistance from Russia is of great help to North Korea,” Lee said.

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and is said to have dozens of nuclear weapons.

North Korea's growing proximity to Russia and Moscow

In the last few years Pyongyang and Moscow have slowly build strong relations. It was evident from the fact that the South Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been sending troops and munitions to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Kim recently hosted China’s President Xi Jinping in Pyongyang and none of them spoke about the issue of North Korean denuclearisation - an outcome experts believe is a tacit acceptance from China.

Since the summit between Kim and Trump, in Hanoi in 2019 collapsed over denuclearisation and sanctions relief, South Korea has often declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state.