The Latest: Kim seen smoking cigarette in Japanese footage
DONG DANG, Vietnam (AP) — The Latest on the summit in Vietnam between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump (all times local):
12:15 p.m.
Japanese TV footage has shown North Korean leader Kim Jong Un taking a pre-dawn smoke break at a train station in China hours before his arrival in Vietnam for his summit with President Donald Trump.
The video broadcast by TBS on Tuesday shows Kim taking a drag on a cigarette and talking with North Korean officials at China’s Nanning rail station. A woman who appears to be his sister Kim Yo Jong is seen holding a crystal ashtray.
Kim arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday after an almost 70-hour train ride that cut through southern China. Kim is frequently seen with a cigarette in his hands. North Korean TV even showed him casually smoking in front of one of his liquid-fuel ICBMs in 2017.
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10:50 a.m.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s limousine has rolled into Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, ahead of his meeting Wednesday with President Donald Trump.
Roads on Tuesday were shut down from the border with China all the way to Hanoi, 170 kilometers (106 miles) away, and soldiers and police milled around the Melia Hotel where Kim was set to stay. Crowds of citizens and throngs of media stood behind barricades hoping to catch a glimpse of the North Korean leader.
Outside of the city’s famed opera house, around the corner from the Metropole Hotel, which is thought to be the summit venue, hundreds of people waited to catch a look at the motorcade.
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10 a.m.
Dozens of anti-Pyongyang protesters in South Korea’s capital have ripped portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and called for President Donald Trump to press Kim over the North’s dismal human rights record at their summit this week.
The protest in Seoul came as Kim arrived in Vietnam by train. The protesters also opposed a potential declaration between Washington and Pyongyang to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, saying the North would use the declaration to call for the United States to reduce its military force in the South.
North Korea’s human rights issues aren’t expected to be on the agenda during Kim’s meeting with Trump, who after their first summit last June in Singapore described Kim as a “great personality” who “loves his people.”
Trump had condemned the cruelty of Kim’s government earlier in his presidency, but seemed to play down the severity of the North Korea’s human rights violations following the Singapore meeting.
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9:20 a.m.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is being accompanied in Vietnam by a group of top lieutenants including his influential younger sister.
Kim arrived by train at the Dong Dang railway station on the China-Vietnam border on Tuesday and is on his way to Hanoi for a summit with President Donald Trump.
Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo Jong was seen before the leader stepped out of their special train and took a black limousine waiting for him at the train station.
Before Kim Jong Un’s arrival, North Korean officials who had arrived in Vietnam in advance, including his top representative for U.S. affairs, Kim Hyok Chol, had gathered at the train station.
Also accompanying Kim Jong Un is Kim Yong Chol, a former military intelligence chief who has been deeply involved in nuclear diplomacy since North Korea entered talks early last year.
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9:15 a.m.
After barreling through China for three days on his green-and-yellow armored train, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has switched to another mode of high-security transport after arriving in Vietnam.
He’s now traveling in a massive bulletproof Mercedes encircled by bodyguards.
After arriving at Vietnam’s Dong Dang Station, Kim shook hands with Vietnamese officials and waved to the crowd before stepping into the limousine. A dozen of crew-cut bodyguards flanked the vehicle and ran in formation as it slowly rolled out of the station and headed to Hanoi, where Kim will meet President Donald Trump for their second summit.
Kim’s bodyguards also ran alongside his limousine during his summit with Trump last June in Singapore and his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last April.
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8:30 a.m.
Kim Jong Un’s train has arrived in Vietnam for the North Korean leader’s second summit with Donald Trump.
Vietnamese troops in crisp white uniforms and black boots stood at attention Tuesday to welcome Kim on a red carpet beneath large North Korean and Vietnamese flags at the Dong Dang railway station on the China-Vietnam border. A crowd gathered along the road near the station to wave North Korean flags and bouquets of flowers on a cold, drizzling morning.
It wasn’t clear if Kim had visited any places in China on his trip from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to the border. Press reports speculate that he will drive the 170 kilometers to Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, ahead of his Wednesday meeting with Trump..